2 Indian-Americans among six arrested for insider trading

Besides Tamil-origin Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of Galleon Group, the two Indian Americans identified as Anil Kumar and Rajiv Goel (both 51) were arrested on Friday, said Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York. While Rajaratnam is a resident of New York, Kumar and Goel live in California. The other three involved in this case are Danielle Chiesi (43) from New York, Robert Moffat (53) from Connecticut and Mark Kurland (60) from New York.

If convicted all of them face imprisonment of up to 20 years, according to the indictment, which reads that the defendants “routinely received inside information directly or indirectly from insiders and provided it to each other for the purpose of trading based on the information”, filed in the US court.

Noting that this should be a wakeup call for the Wall Street, Bharara – an Indian American recently appointed to this powerful post by Obama – termed it as a decisive action against fraud on the Wall Street.

No LTTE links

Meanwhile, the ‘Wall Street Journal’ reported that Rajaratnam was among several wealthy Sri Lankans in US whose donations to a Maryland-based charity made their way to the Tamil Tigers.

Rajaratnam’s attorney Jim Walden said his client was innocent and will fight the insider-trading charges, the Journal said. He also said that the Tamil-origin billionaire had made charitable donations “to rebuild homes” destroyed by the devastating tsunami in Sri Lanka in 2004, but had no links to LTTE.”