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Goldman
Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein testifies before the
Senate Homeland
Security and Governmental Affairs Investigations Subcommittee
hearing on ''Wall
Street and the Financial Crisis: The Role of Investment Banks''
on Capitol Hill
in Washington April 27, 2010. (Credit: Reuters/Jason Reed)
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(Reuters) -
Goldman Sachs Group Inc Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein and Chief
Financial Officer David Viniar could be asked to testify in former board member
Rajat Gupta's civil insider-trading case, according to court documents.
The Goldman
executives are among 10 people "whom we would most want to depose,"
ahead of trial, Gupta's defense attorney Gary Naftalis said in court papers
made public on Monday.
Gupta, 62,
was charged on October 26 with leaking Goldman boardroom secrets to his friend
Raj Rajaratnam, the central figure in a broad U.S. crackdown on insider trading
at hedge funds. Besides Rajaratnam, Gupta is the most prominent executive to
face insider-trading charges in the case.
Gupta faces
criminal charges brought by the Justice Department and a civil case filed by
the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He is fighting the charges.
The letter,
dated November 15, listed Blankfein, Viniar, Goldman Sachs Chief Operating
Officer Gary Cohn, Managing Director David Loeb and lead board member John
Bryan. Blankfein testified as a government witness at Rajaratnam's criminal
trial.
Neither the
influential Wall Street bank nor any of its executives has been accused of
wrongdoing.
Gupta
stepped down from Goldman's board earlier this year. He also is a former
director of Procter & Gamble Co and former global head of the McKinsey
& Co consultancy.
Rajaratnam
was convicted in May and sentenced last month to 11 years in prison. U.S.
District Judge Jed Rakoff also ordered him to pay $92.8 million to the SEC. The
market regulator named him as a defendant in its case against Gupta.
In a
separate letter to the judge, lawyers for Rajaratnam said the Goldman Sachs
employees they want to depose include Cohn and Loeb.
A Goldman
Sachs spokesman, Michael DuVally, declined to comment.
The names
of Cohn and Loeb came up on Friday in court at oral arguments over whether or
not depositions in the regulator's case should be taken until a criminal case
against Gupta is completed.
The SEC
said in a separate letter to the court that it wanted to interview Gupta and
his wife, Anita Matto Gupta, and Rajaratnam and his brother, Rengan.
The judge
has scheduled April 9, 2012 for the start of Gupta's criminal trial and October
1, 2012 for the civil trial.
The cases are
SEC v Gupta and Rajaratnam, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of
New York, No. 11-07566 and USA v Rajat Gupta No. 11-907 in the same court.
(Reporting by Grant McCool)
Related Articles:
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The SEC says that information from Mr Gupta helped
convicted trader Rajaratnam make millions of dollars (BBC)
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