New charges in Rajaratnam insider trading case
Additional criminal charges were filed on Tuesday against Galleon hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam as prosecutors alleged he and his co-defendant reaped $49 million from illegal insider trading, up from an earlier claim of $40 million.
In the parallel civil case against Rajaratnam and co-defendant Danielle Chiesi, a judge ordered the two defendants to turn over wiretaps to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Thousands of wiretaps were made in the criminal probe between 2003 and 2009 involving Wall Street and Silicon Valley firms that was announced last October, but lawyers for the defendants and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission have been tussling over their use in the parallel civil fraud case.
Rajaratnam and Chiesi, a former employee of New Castle Funds LLC, were arrested last October and indicted in December on charges of securities fraud and conspiracy in what prosecutors have described as the biggest hedge fund insider trading case in the United States.
The new indictment adds two more counts of securities fraud against Rajaratnam.
The indictment alleges that Rajaratnam made a total of $45 million and Chiesi $4 million in a wide-ranging scheme that also led to charges against a score of other traders, lawyers or fund managers.
Rajaratnam and Chiesi pleaded not guilty to the original indictment. The next hearing is scheduled for February 11.
A spokesman for Rajaratnam's lawyer could not immediately comment. Chiesi's lawyer Alan Kaufman said the superseding indictment has nothing new with regard to the allegations against my client.
Separately on Tuesday, a judge ruled that Rajaratnam and Chiesi, who are fighting to keep the wiretap evidence out of both criminal and civil cases, must provide the SEC with recordings they received from criminal prosecutors by February 15.
The notion that only one party to a litigation should have access to some of the most important non-privileged evidence bearing directly on the case runs counter to basic principles of civil discovery in an adversary system, U.S. District Court Judge Jed Rakoff's written order said.
While the SEC and criminal prosecutors often coordinate with each other, there are limits under the law on the information they can share in parallel civil and criminal cases, which is why the defense was ordered to provide the material and not the prosecutors.
We are obviously disappointed and respectfully disagree with the ruling, Chiesi's lawyer Kaufman said.
A spokesman for Rajaratnam's lawyer could not immediately comment.
In the wider insider trading probe, 21 people have been criminally or civilly charged. Nine have pleaded guilty and eight of those are cooperating with the government's investigation, including two longtime friends of Rajaratnam.
Rajaratnam, Chiesi and others repeatedly traded on material, nonpublic information pertaining to upcoming earnings forecasts, mergers, acquisitions, or other business combinations, the office of the Manhattan U.S. Attorney said in a statement on Tuesday.
It said the superseding indictment charges trading based on inside information in Intel Corp Hilton Hotels Corp
(Reporting by Grant McCool and Jonathan Stempel; Editing by Gary Hill)
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