Hedge Fund

There have been nine guilty pleas so far in the Galleon hedge fund insider trading case – enough to fill a baseball field with players at every position. Now, reports suggest that the feds are beginning to add to their bench – another guilty plea is coming. Raj Rajaratnam can’t be happy with this development.

We are seeing bare-knuckle litigation at its best in the insider trading case brought against hedge fund exec Raj Rajaratnam. Today, Rajaratnam’s Akin Gump lawyers (under the direction of John Dowd) moved to unseal a nearly decade old criminal case against Roomy Khan, the alleged informant on which the government apparently is relying so heavily.

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More to follow........

Remember when billionaire Raj Rajaratnam was charged by the federal government with insider trading, and Rajaratnam’s new lawyer, John Dowd, then blasted the government’s key witness?

Yesterday, John Dowd, the lawyer for the hedge fund billionaire charged with insider trading, Raj Rajaratnam, filed a document in court seeking to have bond reduced from $100 million to $25 million. But the interesting thing there was what Dowd wrote about the government’s evidence – and about the person who apparently is its key witness. He already is setting the stage for Rajaratnam's defense. Take a look: 

The hedge fund billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, who was charged earlier this month with insider trading, has changed lawyers. As the New York Law Journal is reporting today, Rajaratnam is now being represented by John Dowd, who heads the criminal litigation group of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld. Dowd’s bio is available at http://www.akingump.com/jdowd/.

And in Real Estate news: Long Island newspaper Newsday reports that former Bear Stearns hedge fund manager Ralph Cioffi, who goes on trial next month on charges related to the subprime mortgage meltdown, sold his Southampton home for $8.55 million – after having purchased it for $10.7 million in 2007 and despite its listing price of about $12 million.