The fall from grace is complete. Rajat Gupta, once a member of the board of directors of Goldman Sachs, on Wednesday was sentence to prison for two years by a federal judge for insider trading. This ends the case of the highest profile defendant to date in the U.S. government’s crackdown on insider trading violations.
On Wednesday, Gupta, who serve on the board of Proctor & Gamble and was the chair of a public health organization The Global Fund, was in court for his sentencing hearing. More than 400 letters were sent to the court in support of Gupta prior to the judge making his decision. Included in those letters of support were ones from Microsoft’s founder Bill Gates and the form Secretary of the U.N. Kofi Annan.
In June, Gupta was convicted of leaking information from board meetings at Goldman Sachs in 2008 to his associate and friend Raj Rajaratnam who at the time was managing a hedge fund. Rajaratnam was found guilty last year of insider trading and is currently serving an 11-year sentence.
Prosecutors never accused the former board member of Goldman Sachs of directly profiting from his tipping off Rajaratnam. Like some of the most recent cases in the government crackdown on insider trading, wire taps were used to help convict Gupta and that has created a controversy.
Gupta is scheduled to start his sentence in January, but his lawyers have said he will appeal.
