Gupta barred for life from holding officer position of public company.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: The year 2015 is turning out to be like 2014 for the incarcerated Rajat Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director: a bitter one on the legal front.
The U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. director convicted of insider trading, leaving in place a lifetime ban on serving as an officer or director of a public company, reported Bloomberg.
The rebuff came in the civil case filed against Gupta, who is serving time in Massachusetts, by the Securities and Exchange Commission, not the criminal case that led to his two-year prison sentence. Gupta’s bid for review of the criminal conviction is still pending at the Supreme Court.
Last June the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld a district court ruling that imposed permanent injunctive relief and a $13.9 million civil penalty on Gupta. The penalty was not at issue in the appeal, reported Jurist.
Gupta, 66, was convicted of three counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud in June 2012, primarily upon the basis of statements he made by phone to Rajaratnam, head of the Galleon Group hedge fund firm, informing him of Goldman Sachs’ investments and financial results, the Jurist report said.
The district court sentenced Gupta to two years in prison, one year of supervised release and a $5 million fine. The Second Circuit affirmed the conviction of Gupta’s co-conspirator Rajaratnam in June 2013. Rajaratnam was convicted by the US District Court for the Southern District of New York [official website] in May 2011 and sentenced to fines totaling almost $64 million and 11 years in prison, the longest sentence ever handed down for insider trading, the Jurist report said.