Two Indian Americans among six arrested for insider-trading

Besides Tamil-origin Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of Galleon Group, the two NRIs identified as Anil Kumar and Rajiv Goel were arrested in the $20 million hedge fund insider-trading case.

Six persons, including two Indian Americans and a Sri Lanka-born billionaire, have been arrested in connection with the largest hedge fund insider-trading ever.

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Besides Tamil-origin Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of Galleon Group, the two Indian Americans identified as Anil Kumar (51) and Rajiv Goel (51) were arrested in the $20 million hedge fund insider-trading case on Saturday, said Preet Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York.

While Rajaratnam is a resident of New York, Kumar and Goel live in California. The other three involved in this case, unveiled today, are Danielle Chiesi (43) from New York; Robert Moffat (53) from Connecticut and Mark Kurland (60) from New York.

If convicted all of them face imprisonment of up to 20 years, according to the indictment, which reads that the defendants "routinely received inside information directly or indirectly from insiders and provided it to each other for the purpose of trading based on the information", filed in the US court.

Noting that this should be a wakeup call for the Wall Street, Bharara -– an Indian American recently appointed to this powerful post by US President Barack Obama -- termed it as a decisive action against fraud on the Wall Street.