Raj Rajaratnam, Founder of Galleon Hedge Fund Arrested

FBI have announced that they have filed charges against several people, including billionaire founder Raj Rajaratnam,  associated with $3 Billion Galleon Hedge Fund and ex-Directors of a Bear Stearns Company hedge fund. Galleon Hedge Fund is a major hedge fund famous for its investment in tech stocks.

US government is filing insider trading charges in number of securities going back to as early as 2006. Trades on stocks of companies like Google (GOOG), Akamai (AKAM), Clearwire (CLWR), AMD and Hilton Hotels are under scanner.

“The defendants operated in a world of, you scratch my back, I’ll scratch your back,” said US Atterney Preet Bharara from Manhattan. He went on to say that its the largest ever hedge fund insider trading case.

Raj Rajaratnam was charged with four counts of conspiracy and eight counts of securities fraud. Other charged include Rajiv Goel who worked at Intel Capital as director of strategic investments, Anil Kumar who worked as Director at McKinsey & Co. and IBM Corp executive Robert Moffat.

Raj Rajaratnam is a MBA graduate of University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and considered to be the 559th richest person in the world. He was born in Sri Lanka, studied University of Sussex in England. He moved to U.S. in 1981. Raj Rajaratnam pledged on September 2009 to donate a million US dollars to help with the rehabilitation of former LTTE combatants in Sri Lanka.