Laskar’s lawyer confident of dismissing charges.
By The American Bazaar Staff
WASHINGTON, DC: A former Georgia Tech electrical engineering professor, Joy Laskar, has been indicted on charges of a fraudulent scheme that led to the theft of more than $1 million from the university.
Laskar was indicted December 30 by a Fulton County, Georgia grand jury on two charges of racketeering, Georgia Attorney General Sam Olens’ office announced earlier this month, reported The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The indictment alleges that Laskar, who had served as Georgia Tech’s director of the Georgia Electronic Design Center, used university resources to purchase about $1 million in computer chips from CMP, a French microchip fabricator, to benefit Sayana Wireless, a private company he formed in 2006.
Laskar also allegedly used Georgia Tech resources to conduct his company’s day-to-day business activities — a violation of university policy and procedure. That alleged activity occurred between June 2006 and June 2011, the Journal-Constitution reported.
Laskar was jailed on racketeering charges in 2010 over allegations that he and other Georgia Tech employees funneled school funds into Laskar’s company. The charges came a few months after Laskar and three other employees were suspended without pay after the university’s Department of Internal Auditing found evidence of possible misappropriation of resources to benefit Sayana.
The New York Times had this to say about Laskar: “The downfall of Dr. Laskar was an especially vivid illustration of the volatile reaction that can occur when professors mix academic and entrepreneurial ambitions. Dr. Laskar had been a star at Georgia Tech, who attracted tens of millions of dollars in research money from iconic companies like Samsung, which established a chip design center at the university.
“Georgia Tech aspired to build its reputation as a hotbed of start-ups that would spin out from the university with ideas and technologies gestated there by students and professors. Dr. Laskar was one of the most successful members of the university faculty in that regard, founding several chip start-ups.”
In a phone interview to The New York Times, Craig Gillen, a lawyer for Laskar, said that the attorney general had been running out of time on the case due to the statute of limitations.
“We’ve reviewed the indictment, and we vehemently disagree with the charges brought against Dr. Laskar,” Gillen said. “He’s a well-recognized, national pioneer in his field. This indictment came, literally in our view, days before the case would have gone out on a statute of limitations. We will fight every single allegation. We look forward to Dr. Laskar’s day in court.”
Laskar’s Linkedin profile shows that he is at present a Partner at anayas360, a company which does management consulting and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area, California.
Laskar did his B.S. in Computer Engineering and M.S. in Electrical Engineering from Clemson University, and then did his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Racketeering is punishable by 10 to 40 years in prison and/or a fine of up to $100,000 on each count or three times the amount stolen.