Raj Rajaratnam's Galleon Group founder, was born in Sri Lanka and attended one of the most prestigious schools on the island called St. Thomas University, Mt. Lavinia, and later studied engineering at the University of Sussex in England. He moved to the United States in 1981 and earned an MBA from Wharton, two years later.


The Tamil self-made billionaire hedge fund manager is now the 236th richest American according to Forbes 2009. That was added to the 262nd richest American in Forbes magazine in 2008. Since early 2009, which is the richest person in Sri Lanka born into the world.

Titan Galleon Group Fund has returned 20% so far this year (2009), beating the Nasdaq is up 33%. Rajaratnam started his career as an analyst with boutique investment bank Needham & Co, where his focus was on electronics. He was promoted to President in 1991 and launched Galleon six years later. Initially invested in technology stocks, says her best ideas come from frequent visits to the companies, discussions with executives who invest in their background. He is rumored to be working 14 hours a day.

Prior to founding Galleon Group in January 1997, Raj Rajaratnam spent more than 11 years with Needham & Company, Inc., an industry analyst from electronics to CEO of investment analysis for technology, health and wholesale trade specialty retail and become president of the company in 1991. Ramirez played an important role in the outstanding success of Needham, an investment banking firm specializing in emerging growth companies that raised more than $ 6 billion in over 120 public offerings from 1986 to 1996.

In 1992, Ramirez began managing an investment company focused on the various sectors of the technology industry and an offshore fund in parallel began in July 1995. When Needham Ramirez stopped focusing on money management, was responsible for more than $ 250 million in hedge funds that had achieved a compound annual net return of 37% between July 1992 and December 1996. Needham agreed that Ramirez take control of funds abroad and started a new domestic partnership in January 1997. Today, Galleon Group manages approximately $ 400 million and funds are up 3% during the first four months of 1997.

Raj Rajaratnam recently (September 2009) promised to donate one million U.S. dollars to help the rehabilitation of former combatants of the LTTE.

On Friday, 16 October 2009, Raj Rajaratnam was arrested by the FBI and charged with conspiring with others to trade on the basis of inside information on several publicly traded companies, including Google Inc. U.S. Attorney Preet Bhar, bringing the total benefits for the procedure in 20.6 million U.S. dollars, said at a news conference was the largest case of hedge funds increasingly processed and marked the first use of court authorized wiretaps to capture conversations of the suspects in a case of insider trading. According to a criminal complaint filed in U.S. District Court in Manhattan, Rajaratnam obtained inside information and had her to Galleon Technology Fund to perform operations that made a profit of more than 12.7 million U.S. dollars between January 2006 and July 2007. Other laws got millions more, officials said.

Prosecutors and the FBI have announced they have filed charges against several people involved with the hedge fund Galleon Group, including founder Raj Rajaratnam. Galleon is an important coverage hund player known for his investments in technology stocks.

In particular, the government is filing criminal charges related to insider trading in a range of values that goes back to 2006. So this is much more than an SEC civil standard load.

Rajaratnam was charged with four counts of conspiracy and eight counts of securities fraud. He was arrested at his home last night.

The Galleon Group is something like $ 3 billion management.

The charges stem from the operations in the towns of Hilton Hotels, AMD (AMD), Clearwire (CLWR) and Google (GOOG), Akamai (AKAM).

A number of other individuals were named in the complaint, including an executive with Intel Capital, the venture capital arm of Intel, and one of McKinsey & Company.

Prosecutors also arrested Rajiv Goel, who worked at Intel Capital as director of strategic investments, Anil Kumar, who worked as director of McKinsey & Co., IBM Corp. and CEO Robert Moffat. Former officials of Bear Stearns Asset Management are Danielle Chiesi and Mark Kurland, who were members of New Castle Partners of the firm, which managed about $ 1 billion.

"The defendants operated in a world of, if scratch my back, I'll scratch your back," U.S. Preet Bhar Attorney in Manhattan, said in a press conference today. "Greed, sometimes not good."

Case is the largest trading hedge fund insider trading, Bhar. It is the first time that the wiretaps have been used for purposes of insider trading, suggesting that the government now use the same tools used against Wall Street organized crime and drug cases, he said. Bhar said the case "unprecedented".

Tips on wine and other hedge funds, investor relations companies and companies like Intel, IBM, McKinsey, and the companies whose shares are traded on the regime, Bhar. The prosecutor said the investigation was ongoing and declined to say whether others would be charged.

Rajaratnam and his company earned $ 17 million to 18 million dollars of fraud, Bhar. In recent days, which might have been aware that he was under investigation. According to one of two criminal complaints filed today, said an acquaintance who believed that a former employee of a galleon was wearing a "wire". Rajaratnam bought a plane ticket on October 14 to travel to London today, says the complaint.

Galleon was shocked to learn today that Raj Rajaratnam was arrested this morning in his apartment, "the firm said in a statement. "We had no knowledge of the investigation before it became public and we intend to cooperate fully with the relevant authorities. Galleon is still working and is very fluid."

The Securities and Exchange Commission today sued Rajaratnam also to participate in insider trading. Demand Rajaratnam said the SEC does not deserve its reputation as "the genius of negotiation strategies" or "study of the fundamentals of business savvy and market trends.

"Raj Rajaratnam is a master of the universe, but rather a master of the Rolodex," said Robert Khuzami, director of enforcement at the SEC, said at the press conference. "Cultivating a network of company managers and insiders, and then played in the ring to obtain confidential information about quarterly earnings and takeover activity.

Galleon Partners is headquartered in Manhattan and has offices in London, Singapore, Mumbai and Menlo Park, California. He faces 13 counts of conspiracy and fraud, many of which carry a maximum penalty of 20 years.


Rajaratnam lawyer, Jim Walden, Kurland lawyer, Lawrence Iason, and Chiesi's lawyer, Alan Kaufman, did not immediately return calls.

Prosecutors said they have been investigating the case since at least November 2007, when a person not named in the complaint, began meeting with officials from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The person, who pleaded guilty and is cooperating with authorities, had used insider information to trade securities and tipped Rajaratnam since 2006, prosecutors said.

The person, who had sought a job in a galleon in 2005, helped prosecutors as "records of consensus of the four telephone conversations" with Rajaratnam, the complaint says.

Authorities say there have been other conversations of billionaire too. On 7 March 2008, the government obtained court approval to intercept a cell phone Rajaratnam used, according to one of the complaints. Prosecutors said they've also been listening to two of the phones Chiesi since August 2008.

"A number of calls intercepted by wiretaps Rajaratnam consist of providing, receiving or soliciting material nonpublic information about various publicly traded companies," says the complaint.


Prosecutors said Rajaratnam marketed in 2006 and 2007 about leaks of information within Polycom, Moody's Investors Services Inc. and Market Street Partners. An analyst at Moody's that provides news about Hilton, and the shareholders of the Market Street home, provided tips about Google, prosecutors said. Rajaratnam won $ 12.7 million U.S. in losses and the government gave a confidential informant inside information about other companies, however, they said.

Goel, who had been working in the treasury of Intel Corp., the largest chipmaker in the world, broadcasts news on Clearwire Corp., which learned of the investments made by Intel, and Rajaratnam, won about $ 579,000 in earnings, said the prosecution.

In return, "since the operations highly profitable Rajaratnam goel benefit of a personal brokerage account maintained by goel at Charles Schwab," Bhar said in a statement.


In another alleged scheme, Chiesi received advice from an unidentified person at Akamai Technologies Inc. and Moffat, passing information about IBM, Sun Microsystems, Inc. and Advanced Micro Devices Inc., one of the complaints, he says. Chiesi passed along the tip of Kurland and the two traded in the news, says the complaint.

These tips generated others, prosecutors said, as happened to Chiesi to Rajaratnam, who in turn gave Chiesi inside information about AMD and other companies, prosecutors said.

The Democrats have lost another source of political funding.

Here are his major contributions accumulated in this decade, according to OpenSecrets:

* $ 26,700 to the Democratic Campaign Committee Senate
* $ 26,200 to the Democratic Republic National Committee Services Corp.
* $ 11,100 to Hillary Clinton
* $ 10,000 to Democrat of New Jersey, the State Committee for
* $ 4,600 to Barack Obama
* $ 2,000 to Charles Schumer