Rajat Gupta Gets 2 Years for Insider Trading

A former high-ranking Goldman Sachs executive has been sentenced to 2 years in prison for his role in the largest insider trading scandal to hit Wall Street in many years. It was found that Gupta did not personally profit from his insider trading but his friend and business partner Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group.

While with Goldman, Gupta passed along information to Rajaratnam about an upcoming $5 billion investment by Warren Buffet into Goldman Sachs at the height of the recession in Fall of 2008. He also passed along information about an impending quarterly loss by the company. The judge in the case, Jed Rakoff, suggested that what Gupta did amounted to stabbing Goldman Sachs in the back.

Prosecutors in the case had lobbied for a 10 year sentence and Mr. Gupta’s defense team argued for probation, citing Mr. Gupta’s otherwise clean record and also many years of philanthropy.

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