US wanted me to nail Rajat Gupta: Raj Rajaratnam

Just weeks before fallen hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years in prison for insider trading, US prosecutors pressed him to turn on his friend, former Goldman Sachs Group Inc director Rajat Gupta, Newsweek Daily Beast reported on Tuesday.

Just weeks before fallen hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam was sentenced to 11 years in prison for insider trading, US prosecutors pressed him to turn on his friend, former Goldman Sachs Group Inc director Rajat Gupta, Newsweek Daily Beast reported on Tuesday.

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In his first interview about his case, Rajaratnam was quoted as saying that he was initially asked on the day of his October 16, 2009 arrest to “wear a wire” and record conversations with Gupta, also a longtime global head of elite consultancy McKinsey & Co.

The article, posted at http://bit.ly/oSXZ8T, said prosecutors asked Rajaratnam again as late as two weeks before his October 13 sentencing in Manhattan federal court.

“They wanted me to plea bargain,” it quoteed the Galleon Group founder as saying, in an interview at his Manhattan apartment where he is under house arrest. “They want to get Rajat. I am not going to do what people did to me. Rajat has four daughters.”

A spokeswoman for Rajaratnam’s lawyers at law firm Akin Gump declined to comment on Monday.

Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for the office of the Manhattan US Attorney, said in an emailed statement: “This article appears to be based on an interview with Rajaratnam and a number of his assertions are inaccurate.”