Bill Gates and Kofi Annan are among several prominent businessmen and humanitarians asking a judge to show fairness when he sentences Westporter Rajat Gupta, a former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. board member, for his insider trading conviction later this month, according to published reports. 
Rajat Gupta: Bill Gates, Koffi Annan wrote letters. File photo
The judge released the letters Friday ahead of the Oct. 24 sentencing in Manhattan federal court at the request of a reporter from the Wall Street Journal. Prosecutors and Gupta’s lawyers gave their consent, the judge said, according to the newspaper.
A jury convicted Gupta, 63, in June of tipping his friend and business associate, Galleon Group hedge fund founder Raj Rajaratnam, about Goldman’s boardroom secrets during the financial crisis. (See WestportNow June 15, 2012)
Gupta is the most influential and best-known corporate figure to be caught in a broad insider trading crackdown of the last four years. A mover in elite business and philanthropic circles for decades, he is also a former head of the McKinsey & Co. management consultancy.
Microsoft Corp. co-founder Gates, in one letter among about 200 written to District Judge Jed Rakoff, wrote that he wanted to help “round out Rajat’s profile as you consider the appropriate sentence for him.”
Gates worked with Gupta when Gupta was chair of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. Gates wrote that “many millions of people are leading better lives – or are alive at all – thanks to the efforts he so ably supported.”
The letters to the judge came from company heads, academics, friends and family, including his wife and four adult daughters.
Former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan, in his letter, said: “I urge you to recognize Rajat for the good he has done in the world, to give him the credit that he deserves for helping others and to take into account his efforts to improve the lives of millions of people.”
One of the themes running through many of the letters was that not enough of Gupta’s humanitarian work came out at his trial. The judge had puts limits on what the jury could hear about Gupta’s philanthropy.
His wife, Anita Gupta, wrote, “I know I have to accept the decision of the jury but I cannot but feel that who my husband is and what he stands for did not fully come out at the trial.”
The maximum sentence for securities fraud is 20 years and the maximum sentence for conspiracy is five years, although it seems unlikely that Gupta would receive such a heavy punishment following his conviction on those charges.
Rajaratnam was convicted of 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy last year and is serving an 11-year prison term.
No one is above the law, even nice “humanitarian” people.
Mr. Gupta should have considered the consequences prior to breaking the law. I’m guessing he was aware of what he was doing when he did so. On the flip side, the fact that he did so doesn’t diminish his philanthropic work