The conviction of former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta will lead to prosecutors pursuing financial crime more aggressively, defence lawyers have suggested.
Mr Gupta was found guilty of feeding confidential information to a corrupt hedge fund manager, according to the New York Law Journal. The conviction is the most prominent so far in a wide-ranging investigation, with many suggesting that investigators will be emboldened by the result, reports Global Legal Post.
Mr Gupta’s lawyer, Gary Naftalis of New York law firm Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel, said he was disappointed with the guilty verdicts. He said: ‘We believe the facts of this case demonstrate that Mr Gupta is innocent. He always acted with honesty and integrity.’
The Wall Street Journal reports that Mr Gupta is the 62nd person to be convicted or to have pleaded guilty out of 68 people charged since 2009 under the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s inside-trading hunt.
According to that newspaper’s sources, authorities in New York have suggested they are seeking to build cases against 120 additional people whom they believe have broken insider-trading laws.