On Monday, Blankfein confirmed Gupta's presence on a
conference call the afternoon of Sept. 23, 2008, during which the Goldman Sachs
Board of Directors debated whether to accept $5 billion from investor Warren
Buffett at the onset of the financial crisis, HuffPo writes.. Prosecutors
allege that shortly after that call, Gupta phoned Rajaratnam to pass along
information about the deal.
Rajaratnam immediately using that information to buy shares
in Goldman, according to prosecutors -- a charge corroborated by Rajaratnam’s
former assistant during separate testimony at the Gupta trial in May. Goldman
didn’t announce that it was accepting the investment until after markets closed
later that day.
Blankfein also testified that during a June 2008 meeting in
St. Petersburg, Russia, the Goldman board discussed the possibility of
purchasing either a distressed commercial bank or the insurance giant AIG --
information that Gupta was heard relaying to Rajaratnam on a wiretapped phone
conversation later that summer. That tape was presented to jurors earlier in
the trial.
“It was agreed that AIG would be a suitable target” at the
St. Petersburg meeting, Blankfein told the jury Monday. Any such information discussed in board
meetings was secret, Blankfein said. “All parts of it were confidential. The
fact that anything was discussed in the board meeting is itself a confidential
fact.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/06/04/rajat-gupta-lloyd-blankfein-insider-trading_n_1569446.html?ref=business
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