Maybe Even John Dowd Can’t Save Raj Rajaratnam?

Sometimes, people put too much faith in lawyers to solve problems. The truth is that lawyers have to work with a certain set of facts, and if the facts are overwhelmingly bad, no lawyer is going to be able to defeat that. We’ve previously noted our view that the insider trading fight between the government and billionaire Raj Rajaratnam was going to be a battle royale, and that RR’s lawyer, John Dowd, was going to pull out all of the stops to defend the defendant. We have been looking forward, in a sense, to the trial.

Well, hold on a moment. The government seems to be pulling the noose tighter and tighter around Rajaratnam’s neck. Look at two posts on the Wall Street Journal Law Blog yesterday by Nathan Koppel and Amir Efrati about Rajaratnam and Anil Kumar, a former McKinsey & Co. partner who has just waived his right to be indicted in the case. It may be that neither Dowd nor any other lawyer, even Clarence Darrow, will be able to save Rajaratnam. We’re very much looking forward to 2010 here at the Financial Fraud Law Blog, but we are not sure that Rajaratnam is thinking the same thing.
 
The WSJ blog entries are at http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/12/30/raj-rajaratnam-the-inside-story/ and http://blogs.wsj.com/law/2009/12/30/former-mckinsey-partner-waives-indictment-in-galleon-case/.