Rajaratnam Appeal: Is Snowden Right That Big Brother Is Listening?

June 27, 2013

On Monday, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan affirmed the 2011 insider trading conviction of Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group hedge funds. The case against Rajaratnam, who is serving a sentence of 132 months imprisonment, was constructed using, among other evidence, 45 secretly recorded phone calls from Rajaratnam’s cell phone during which he shared confidential information about publicly traded companies. The trial court found that the government had acted with “reckless disregard for the truth” in obtaining permission to wiretap Rajaratnam’s phone. A unanimous three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals disagreed. The decision is significant, especially because the investigation into Rajaratnam’s behavior, which also implicated the former director of Goldman Sachs Rajat K. Gupta, is the most prominent example of the use of wiretaps typically associated with organized crime and drugs cases in white collar prosecutions. [...]

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