A Reuters piece on the grand-standing of Judge Rakoff in the Citigroup case, where he sided entirely with the SEC:

In its decision, a three-judge appeals court panel faulted Rakoff for appearing to overstep his authority, and for overlooking the possibility that Citigroup had done nothing wrong and would never have settled had it been required to admit liability.

Rakoff “believed it was a bad policy, which disserved the public interest, for the SEC to allow Citigroup to settle” without addressing the issue of liability, the 2nd Circuit panel said. “It is not, however, the proper function of federal courts to dictate policy to executive administrative agencies.”

The panel also said requiring an admission of liability might even hurt the public interest, because it “would in most cases undermine any chance for compromise.”

And:

“We agree to settlements when the terms reflect what we reasonably believe we could obtain if we prevailed at trial, without the risk of delay and uncertainty that comes with litigation,” said Robert Khuzami, the SEC’s enforcement chief. “Equally important, this settlement approach preserves resources that we can use to stop other frauds and protect other victims.”

In his biting November opinion, Rakoff said that approving a settlement without knowing the underlying facts was wrong. “An application of judicial power that does not rest on facts is worse than mindless, it is inherently dangerous,” he wrote.

The judge also called the $285 million payout, including restitution and a $95 million fine, “pocket change” for the third-largest U.S. bank, and said by settling the SEC appeared more interested in a “quick headline.”

CARTE BLANCHE

Lynn Stout, a professor at Cornell Law School, called the 2nd Circuit’s response “somewhat shocking.”

“The 2nd Circuit appears to be giving the SEC carte blanche in deciding what is in the public interest in settling cases against financial institutions,” she said. “This is especially troubling as the SEC is a party itself to the settlement.”

WeWereWallStreet:

• See Comments on this Post

“Raj’s brother, Rengan Rajaratnam, in a taped conversation with Raj about another McKinsey consultant they were working to turn, made what we think was the comment that best summarizes the entire affair: “Scumbag. Everybody is a scumbag.”

The SEC’s original charges were brought in an administrative action, the sanctions of which don’t include a criminal conviction or jail time.  Gupta sued to move the case to federal court, claiming that the SEC’s action denied him his right to a jury trial.  Fair enough, but you’d think that someone who spent years selling strategy would be a smarter buyer when his lawyers were selling it to him.

Gupta’s trial is scheduled to begin in April and he’s no doubt spending millions on defense.  Even if he wins, those millions and an acquittal won’t help him get his reputation back or be welcomed back into his old circles. That’s how Greenspan said it would work. His peers have already convicted him, including his former partners at McKinsey, whose thousands of employees no more deserve to be tainted by a few bad apples than those of Arthur Andersen did back in 2002.

A better road out of the mess he got himself in would have been to apologize, admit to the SEC charges, and use the millions he’s spending on lawyers to buy mosquito nets in Africa or make non-profit micro loans in Indian villages. Both of those places need the money a lot more than high powered defense attorneys whose best outcome still won’t solve Gupta’s main problem. Everybody sins. How you handle being caught defines the line between redemption and recalcitrance.”

(Lila:  How can you be sure he sinned?)

Comment

This piece sums up my feelings well.  Gupta was sold a bad strategy by his lawyers. Naftalis might be a brilliant guy. But here are some things that make uneasy:

1. He’s old friends with Judge Rakoff and he couldn’t work out a way to get the hearsay excluded and the tapes of the leakers included?

2. He announces his defendant is going to take the stand, which is rarely done and which always leads to a conviction in insider cases, anyway. Then he turns around on Monday and says no. So as the prosecution and defense are winding up, the only thing playing in the media and in the jury’s mind is – this guy can’t face us on the stand.

How bad did that look? And why did Naftalis do that to him?

3. Instead of just accepting the SEC’s administrative hearing and taking whatever the deal the government had for him, which would have involved  no jail time or criminal conviction, he is facing major jail time.

Maybe he was so convinced he was being unfairly singled out. Maybe he knows he’s innocent, how can we be sure?

4. Now he also has a criminal conviction, after a brilliant and honorable career. He is a pariah.

5. According to some, the appeal is going to be very difficult. If Naftalis blew the defense, how is he going to succeed on the appeal?

6.  There are so many odd things, including Rakoff’s decision on keeping the defense’s evidence from the jury; his instruction to them on conspiracy; the speed of the decision; the media framing etc.

I have to ask the question. Is there something more going on….a bigger set up?

TWO QUESTIONS: When Lloyd Blankfein asked him to stay on in September 2008, was there something else going on?

Why did Blankfein go over and shake Raj Rajaratnam’s hand at his trial? It was unusual, and some said it showed how gracious he was.  Why did he do it? Was there something else? Did he and Big Raj cut some kind of deal and throw Gupta to the wolves?  What is Mark Schwartz’s relationship to Gupta? Why was Henry King to be protected? How do we know there wasn’t another call that day, on Sept 23?

Rakoff, Naftalis, Blankfein, Loeb, Bharara.

All from New York,  a city dominated by one industry.

If  Government Sachs and the Government decided to get together to stick the knife in this guy, do you think they’d get to influence the judge and…would a clever and unscrupulous defense lawyer also play his cards in the manner best suited to himself, rather than to his client?

Just puzzled and very saddened by this ominous case.  Something doesn’t feel right. It feels like a puppet show, whose outcome was already known before hand.

20 years for something which is perfectly normal in investment banking? How are you gonna make money, ha?

“Twenty years in jail but will his assets, which have presumably been secreted away in to some tax haven, also be found and confiscated for the betterment of anyone but him and his family.”

The Economic Times in an otherwise rambling attempt at back-handed character assassination admits that Preet Bharara might have his own motives:

Other ambitions could well ride on the outcome as well. Although the prosecutor who brought the case, Punjab-born and New Jersey-raised Preet Bharara, has claimed not to be interested in politics, it’s just such high-profile cases that have launched political careers for some of his predecessors as US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, most recently Rudolph Giuliani, who parlayed his successes in sending New York mobsters to jail and in prosecuting financeers Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken on insider-trading charges into a successful candidacy for mayor of New York in the 1990s.

I mean, it can’t only be defendants who suffer from envy, right?

And “envy of the richer” might have its counterpart in “envy of the more powerful” and envy of many other things, including simply the limelight. Preet Bharara, after all, has got the dubious distinction of being on the cover of Time Magazine.

Preet Bharara is said to be a savvy operator who is in the running for Eric Holder’s job and has been having discussions, reportedly, about how much he could earn in the private sector ($6 million), which is pretty good going for such a young guy.  Rajat Gupta, remember, only started earning multiple millions in his forties.

You remember before they helped destroy the global economy, Rubin, Summers, and Greenspan were also on the cover of Time.  Obama got a Nobel Peace Prize….so he could go bomb Pakistan and start a cyberwar against Iran.

The prize is like putting a nice shiny sticker on something and dangling it in front of a two-year old. It’s to make sure baby keeps his eye on the bright stuff, while you rob him of his milk.

But all that aside, why does the Economic Times miss the single most important reason people go to trial, which is not that they become so arrogant they think they can win not matter what.

It is that they think they’re innocent and they have the means to prove it.

Maybe, unfortunately,  they also believe in the American legal system.

Maybe they think they won’t be tried in the media.

Maybe they don’t know how dumb jurors can be.

Maybe they don’t know how biased  people can be.

Maybe they think success isn’t ENVIED by a lot of people.

Especially the success of foreigners.

And Rajat Gupta was always a foreigner, no matter how high he rose in corporate America.

The only good thing about this verdict is that for the first time, Gupta, and a lot of his Indian friends in the business world, will wake up to the fact that no matter what their passport says,  no matter what the sign on the door says, when the chips are down, they are, finally, just another wog…

And maybe Time Magazine should put that on its next cover.

Walter Pavlo at Forbes:

Gupta’s attorney, Gary Naftalis, released the following statement:

We are pleased that the jury acquitted Mr. Gupta on a number of significant charges, including the only charge related to Procter and Gamble. We are obviously disappointed in the jury’s verdict with regard to the other counts, which are based on the hearsay wiretaps of Mr. Rajaratnam.

We believe the facts of this case demonstrate that Mr. Gupta is innocent of all these charges, and that he has always acted with honesty and integrity. This is only Round One. We will be moving to set aside the verdict and will if necessary appeal the conviction.”

The only time that Gupta was caught on tape talking to Raj Rajaratnam concerning anything considered “inside information” was on a call July 29, 2008.

Lila: Actually Mr. Pavlo is being misleading here –

Please read  the defendant’s Memorandum In Support of Motion In Limine Number One (US V Gupta 2012 WL1591941)

Walter Pavlo:

“Rajaratnam was found guilty last year and is currently serving an 11-year prison sentence.  The FBI was already taping Raj, so when Gupta got on the line they thought they had hooked a larger fish. Gupta’s comments on that call were general observations about a Goldman board meeting where talks of buying a commercial bank were discussed.  Goldman never purchased such a bank, nor was Gupta specific about the bank.  However, those were turbulent times in the markets and rumors were rampant.

The other call occurred on September 23, 2008, when “Gupta’s phone number” came up on the phone of Raj’s executive assistant, Caryn Eisenberg.  Eisenberg, who was a witness for the government, said that Gupta was on the short list of important people who could gain quick access to Raj. That list included Rajiv Goel, Anil Kumar and Danielle Chiesi, all of whom pleaded guilty to insider trading charges.  That call, which took place moments after Goldman’s board meeting approving of a $5 billion investment from Warren Buffett, was put through to Raj …. and soon thereafter Raj purchased 267,000 shares of Goldman stock, which was certain to rise on the news.  However, there was no recording of that conversation.

Then Gupta had friends, former friends, like Anil Kumar, also formerly of McKinsey and Company, who testified of the close relationship between he, Raj and Gupta.  It tied them all together, but still it did not tie Gupta to a specific trade.

Then there was the whole compensation thing.  Gupta made no money off of the deals / tips.  Even the government tied specific dollar amounts to Raj’s trades, as they did many other traders and tippers.  In the Galleon prosecution there were lawyers getting paid money for information and traders reaping huge profits.  Not Gupta.  

Not only could he not be tied to a specific trade, but there was no trace of any money or benefit that he received.

When a jury is asked to put a man in prison for the rest of his life, shouldn’t the evidence be more than circumstantial?

I mean, if it walks like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck, is that enough to guarantee it’s a duck?

Lila Rajiva: No, Mr. Pavlo, it could be a….quack decoy!

Actually, this case looks more like another bird:

Insider cases cannot rest solely on who called whom when.

Everyone in the financial/banking sector and many outside would be doing jail-time, otherwise.

Banks and firms all over the country get calls from hedge-funds and analysts and writers all day long.

Unless they are intentionally passing on material non-public information in the hope of profiting from a trade, this is not actionable.

Call 1 (July 29, 2008): There is no evidence that the July call fits any of the criteria.

Call 2 (Sept 23, 2012): And the September call was never recorded, no tip was received, and Gupta is not even named as a tipster.

Case closed.

Walter Pavlo:

For years, this country has prosecuted people who have gone to prison for years, decades, only to find out years later that the prosecution was wrong, the evidence was flawed, the person was innocent.  If an intelligent person were to look at the Gupta case, they should correctly assume that he was careless in his friendship with Raj.  But when considering a life sentence, perhaps there should have been a bit more.”

Comment:

In this otherwise excellent article, Mr. Pavlo makes what looks like a serious mistake about the July 2008 call.

In the July 29, 2008 call the information that Gupta discussed with Galleon, a client of Goldman’s with EVERY RIGHT TO KNOW about what was happening, was PUBLIC information already sent out by Goldman itself.

Insider trading is when you trade material non-public information for a tangible benefit. 

Even Bharara’s team did NOT call the information in that call MATERIAL, although they lied and said it was non-public.

Please read  the defendant’s Memorandum In Support of Motion In Limine Number One (US V Gupta 2012 WL1591941)

In this motion, Naftalis & Co, argue convincingly that the July 29, 2008 call is not probative (tending to prove) of the issue at hand (insider trading) but is prejudicial (tending to confuse the actual issue with the appearance of guilt on something else).

It should therefore have been excluded.

Rakoff did NOT exclude it and the effect was exactly as the defense feared it would be.

THE PREJUDICIAL PHONE CALL OF JULY 29, 2008 CONFUSED THE JURY

The jury believed that the conversation on that phone call (which was neither material, nor non-public, nor productive of a tip or trade or benefit) somehow meant that Gupta must have always been talking to Raj in the same way about every other board meeting, even at board meetings where  non-public and material information was discussed.

The jury then believed it must have been Gupta who gave the alleged tip that resulted in the Galleon trades on Sept 23, at 3:57 and 3:58.

[I am unable, for some reason, to copy-paste the relevant portion, but it is on page 3 (of 6) of the document I cite above.]

To repeat one last time, the July 29, 2008 call which was used by Bharara to tar the defendant was:

1. NOT MATERIAL The facts are that Goldman itself conceded the information in the July 2008 call was not material,  in the sense of being crucial to make or not make a trade.  It was giving it out to important clients (Galleon was one, remember) and to analysts anyway.

2. NOT NON-PUBLIC As to non-public, the financial press, including Dow Jones, Merrill Lynch and Oppenheimer analysts, and Wall Street Journal, had already discussed the issues Gupta passed on to Galleon’s Raj. Bharara simply LIED when he said this information was non-public. Check the defense’s memo above.

3. LED TO NO TIP OR TRADE

And finally, this call led to no tip or trade from Gupta and cannot be tied to any profit by him or Galleon.

So, tell me, why did Judge Rakoff allow Bharara to bring this into the case, except to provide a wire-tapped private conversation that would sound incriminating to an undiscerning person?

Good piece here by Reuters Breaking Views (Reuters, Forbes, The Guardian have run some fair analysis)

“Unlike Rajaratnam and other insider traders, Gupta wasn’t caught on tape discussing wrongdoing. And though he bought into a Galleon fund, the evidence that he gained financially from his tips was thin. Yet prosecutors made the most of their circumstantial case, including phone records of Gupta calling Rajaratnam seconds before the hedgie traded Goldman shares.

It shows prosecutors can win without a smoking gun. Although that should give every would-be tip giver or user pause, it doesn’t mean it’ll stop them from taking the risk. For one, it’s still not obvious when an insider crosses the line.

Divulging information is only illegal if the divulger means to profit. Gupta didn’t clearly benefit. That the jury convicted him anyway suggests a mere desire to help his friend may have been enough. Such a fuzzy legal standard, however, makes compliance complex.”

I have been reading up about Jed Rakoff’s cases and he is a strange guy. He’s being touted by Vanity Fair and other establishment outlets as some kind of “enforcer” of Wall Street. This is a bad sign already. Think Elizabeth Warren or Alan Greenspan, for that matter. Anyone who gets touted on Time Magazine cover as a savior, including Assange, should be regarded with suspicion.

Rakoff has been involved with several cases involving the Goldman mafia. I haven’t had time to get into any depth on them. this is what I take away. He makes decisions that look tough, but then when you dig into them, you find their long-term effects are negative and would actually make enforcements more difficult. That’s what Robert Khuzami thinks. Of course, Khuzami, who went after Goldman too, has his own motives.

But in a case involving a Madoff victim and the Madoff trustee, learned opinion actually concluded that Rakoff had made it HARDER for victims to collect, shifting the burden of proof to them to show that they didn’t knowingly accept money they knew was coming from a scam (that’s my rough precis of more complex issues).

Then in another case, Bank of America, again issues have been raised about whether his method of proceeding, itself strongly criticized by some,  would actually make it harder in future and more expensive for the government.

Bank of America, in any case, was one of the banks that got targeted by the Big Boyz, and by their social media/hacker stooges on the left who are part of the new “covert government.” that is, it’s not a connected bank in the same way as JP Morgan or Goldman. In other words, the judicial system in being used selectively to enable interbank take-downs.

And that’s what we have here in the Gupta case.  Gupta is being made a target,  to distract from the real perps. Meanwhile, the jurisprudence of insider-trading is muddied up – appearing to laymen to have been tightened up, but at the same time to legal experts as having actually been weakened.

This is all tentative on my part, of course.

But Rakoff’s rulings on hearsay are puzzling many experts, the jury’s rush to judgment is breath-taking, the media framing is obvious, and the propaganda value of all this as part of a broad covert war on India is apparent to anyone who knows the political context in which this is unfolding.

In other words, Rakoff is enabling what the banksters/globalists actually want: A fuzzy environment, where they can use the law to target their enemies and make their own position even stronger.

Can’t people see what’s going on here? Please check my archives of Sept. 2008, and read about WaMu, Lehman and the rest. It was interbank cannibalism, not global collapse, as the mainstream media, for its own purposes, wanted you to believe.

Same thing here.

The guy being thrown to the wolves as though this is a take-down of Goldman, when he is actually being taken down to PROTECT Goldman.

And the jurisprudence is supposedly being tightened and toughened on insider trading, but it is really being made murkier so the ruling mafia can USE IT SELECTIVELY to pursue political enemies and commercial rivals.

That’s as simply as I can explain the big picture.

I am going to look at this close up, to see if there are any clues that have fallen by the way side.

The most crucial part of the prosecution’s case – the stuff that would normally be regarded as hearsay but was admitted as an exception – are wire-taps, in which Rajaratnam mentions to his traders that someone has tipped him off about the Buffet investment in Goldman. In the same taps  he says he ordered his traders at Galleon to buy shares in Goldman as a result.

This is the pdf of the motion in which the prosecution requests that this hearsay be admitted as evidence of a conspiracy:

“On September 23, 2008, from approximately 3:13 p.m. to 3:54 p.m., Goldman’s Board held a special meeting during which it approved a $5 billion infusion of capital to Goldman by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway. Until the public announcement of that transaction, which was made after the close of the market on September 23, Buffett’s investment in Goldman was confidential. Buffett’s $5 billion investment was particularly significant because it occurred in the midst of the 2008 financial crisis and approximately one week after Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy. Buffett’s investment helped shore up Goldman’s
liquidity, as well as investors’ confidence that Goldman was going to survive the crisis.

Gupta participated in the Goldman Board call by telephone from a conference room in McKinsey’s Manhattan office. Gupta’s assistant, who was in McKinsey’s Connecticut office, dialed into the Board call, and then connected Gupta to the call. Gupta’s phone disconnected from the Goldman Board call at approximately 3:54 p.m. Almost immediately thereafter, Gupta’s assistant placed a call to Rajaratnam’s direct line at Galleon and then connected Gupta to the call. Gupta’s phone disconnected from that call at approximately 3:55 p.m.”

Got that?

Gupta was on the Goldman conference call (Board call) upto 3:54 and then the Gupta line was connected for about a minute to RR’s direct line at Galleon at 3:55.

Means the call from the Gupta line was one minute (3:54-3:55).

RR’s favorite trader and confidante Ian Horowitz isn’t around, so he uses other people.

At 3:57 a Galleon junior trader, Ananth Muniyappa, buys Goldman 100,000 shares of Goldman from Morgan Stanley.

At 3:58 a Galleon partner, Gary Rosenback, buys 250,000 shares from Deutsche Bank.

Keep those times in mind.

The next day,  September 24, 2008, before the market opens, RR speaks to Horowitz on his cell phone twice, unaware (so they say) that his phone was being tapped by the FBI.

Call One (7:09 AM)

In this call, RR refers to a call that had come in the previous day, Sept 23, at 3:58. He indicates that something good was happening at Goldman.

Lila: Notice the time, 3:58.

Now, look at the time when the Gupta call came in for a minute – 3:55.

Those aren’t the same calls, or are they?

Did RR just mistake the time?

Why was he that precise about it then?

Were there two calls – just thinking out loud here –  that somehow the prosecutors didn’t get? How do they know he was only referring to calls on his land-line?

Could he have got a cell phone call? I don’t know..I’d just like to know more.

This guy is operating a crooked hedge-fund ring, and he takes only calls on land-lines directly to his office?

But when he calls his conspirators, he uses a cell-phone, right?

So is there only one cell-phone? Your average teen-ager has at least two or three these days.  Even small-time crooks would know better. Why has everyone leaped to the conclusion that the call at 3:55 (on the Gupta office line) was the same call RR is talking about the next day to his buddies (3:58)?

The defense needs to get hold of ALL RR’s cellphones, walkie-talkies, ham radios, pagers and everything else a savvy operator might use to keep his chat about illegal stuff under the radar…

Indian businesses in Italy  targeted in retaliation for detention of Italian naval guards.

“KOCHI: The detention of Italian naval guards turned bitter with La Destra (‘The Right’), a right-wing organisation, forcing Indian restaurants in Rome to down shutters for a night as a mark of protest against the custody of their personnel.

Flaunting posters that screamed ‘Italy is with you’, ‘We miss you’, ‘Italy is waiting for you’, La Destra, supported by former Italian health minister Francesco Storace, held demonstrations in front of Indian restaurants.

But La Destra has no intention to boycott Indian products. “We just want our soldiers to be freed. The whole country is with them,” he said. The organisation boasts of 20,000 followers in Rome and more than a lakh across Italy.”

Comment:

This case shows a different aspect. The crowd is intimidating Indian businesses in retaliation for a political/military issue.

I can only imagine what would happen if an Indian crowd were to intimidate Italians in India, because they disagreed with Italian government policies or actions.  First, it would never happen.

And if it did, the international media would descend in a swarm, the targets would be plastered on the cover of TIME magazine and India would be hauled in front of a human rights abuses tribunal.

An international lawyer would be dispatched to sue the government and bankrupt it (no leftist worries about bankrupting poor people when they are suing governments; they only worry about it when the government spends money on behalf of businesses…not, let me add, because I approve of that, either).

The point I am making is, notice how a problem in one area is solved by intimidation in the public arena?

Just as, in the Gupta case, something that can’t be won on the merits is settled through media framing  and an aggressive judge, with an agenda.

From Shadow Warrrior:

Subject: South Asia type person convicted
To:

A South Asia type person has been convicted of insider trading. He used to head McKinsey, the criminal enterprise that made money by advising governments to rob the people and hand over a portion of that money to McKinsey.

My Comment

Yes.  Gupta is being made the fall guy for opening up India to globalization, a process I’ve criticized repeatedly. But, throwing him under the bus doesn’t undo that;  it only targets the Indian community, and it is unjust.  Opening up India to globalization was a POLITICAL PROCESS.

One can disagree with it or not. One can say it was fair or not.  One can have strikes and bandhs against it, fine. But using the legal system to go to war for your politics is a different thing.

It sets an very dangerous precedent.

Which Indian is safe now? If you are successful, the federal government with its access to every kind of communication, without even a warrant, can drag you out, concoct a case out of hearsay, cut a few deals with some crooked characters and then try you in the media, which is controlled, let’s not forget.

Other immigrants, especially dark-skinned ones, are going to be too afraid to stick with you.

The first thing is to be calm and hope that Mr. Naftalis and his team can bring attention to the actual facts in the case.

I have thought a lot about this case and there is no way that it is anything but an extremely misguided verdict.

Leave alone the facts in the case.

Just look at the way it was decided.

1. There has NEVER been such a high-profile, distinguished corporate figure caught up in an insider trading investigation and convicted. Never. Yet, is Gupta some kind of Madoff-type figure to warrant this special treatment? No. By all accounts (including Goldman Sachs’) he was a very trustworthy, reliable director.

So why the special attention?  Even if Gupta was insider-trading – which I don’t believe for a second – are you telling me with a straight face that no other corporate directors get insider information and use it?

Buffet getting inside information about Goldman being rescued so he can pump money into it – what do you call that? Clairvoyance?

2. There has never been an insider investigation using RICO laws (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) and wire-tapping, outside mafia investigations. Now, it’s being used on senior managers? Why not on Congress? Or the Federal Reserve? Was Lloyd Blankfein wire-tapped? If not, why not? Do only brown people get wire taps? So instead of actual Russian Israeli mafia figures being investigated, Preet Bharara shines up his resume on the nearest desi patsy he can find?

3.  There was – for the tenth time – NO QUID PRO QUO. Gupta never traded on any information; he did not ask anyone else to trade; he showed no profits for his information; and, in fact, he lost his entire investment. This is the strangest insider-trading case, where the guy lost!  Why this specially severe treatment for an exceptionally brilliant and successful man, well-liked by everyone? Not a corporate raider who put people out of work, not a penny-stock shyster who scammed his customers, not a con man, or a thief, or incompetent. Why the severe charges and penalties?

4.  There was no MENS REA. Gupta’s chat is casual, because he doesn’t see it as “leaking’ or “tipping.” That’s quite obvious.  Galleon was an important client, Raj was a business associate.

5.There is no hard evidence and the circumstantial evidence is open to interpretation. Bharara’s charts show Galleon trading after quarterly reports as though this is inherently suspicious. All traders trade quarter results. There is nothing unusual in that.  The prosecution shows profits resulting after information passed (allegedly). It doesn’t show the days when trades were made and money lost after calls. It’s purely selective, hypothetical, inferential, and voodoo justice.

6. The only person who ever said  Gupta was envious was Rajaratnam. The only person whoever said there was a board member leaking was Rajaratnam. The only person who said Gupta wanted to be a billionaire was Rajaratnam. Rajaratnam is a convicted swindler and criminal hedge-fund operator. He’s suspected of funding the Tamil Tigers, who since 2006, have suddenly risen in status in US foreign policy.

That’s why the leftist media in the US was so sympathetic to Raj and took so long (12 days) over his case, which was FILLED with smoking guns and was evidently and obviously a large, deliberate conspiracy, while taking no more than a few hours to convict Gupta, who has been proved only to have chatted too openly with Raj.

Lloyd Blankfein is snickering and heaving a sigh of relief, hoping that the body he threw under the bus will keep the cops busy while he tidies up shop.

Please read the case. Look at the facts.

Please go over to Deep Capture or Naked Capitalism and read what what is really happening on Wall Street and who the bad guys are.