Jurors deliberating the fate of Raj Rajaratnam finished deliberations for the week at mid-day Friday and will go back to work on Monday.
The jurors have been at it since last Monday, and they haven’t sent down any notes with questions or requests since Wednesday, Michael Rothfeld of The Wall Street Journal noted. Since the defendant faces 14 counts of conspiracy and securities fraud in what has been billed as the biggest insider trading case in a long time, maybe it’s not surprising that the jury has been out a while.
Rajaratnam, 53, a billionaire co-founder of the Galleon Group LLC hedge fund, is accused of reaping more than $60 million in illicit profits using confidential information from well place confederates. More than 20 people caught up in the inquiry in the Southern District of New York have pleaded guilty, and some have testified against their former friend. Prosecutors also introduced dozens of tape-recorded phone conversations purportedly showing the defendant engaging in his inside dealings.
The defense team has tried to convince the jury that Rajaratnam merely did what a lot of people wish they could do: made shrewd investments by being smart enough to assemble bits of information that were already out there into a “mosaic.”
Some lawyers who have followed the case say the SDNY prosecutors should try a new line of work if they lose this case, so strong is the evidence. On the other hand, Courtney Comstock of Business Insider wrote that the jurors had asked to review what amounted to the defense’s best evidence, and that prosecutors were “visibly worried.”
Preet Bharara, the U.S. Attorney for the SDNY, has a lot riding on the case, although not as much as Rajaratnam, who could go to prison for two decades if he is convicted. On the other hand, he’s not on trial for being money-hungry, and his team doesn’t have to prove him innocent to win. It just has to create a “reasonable doubt.”
