Raj Rajaratanam Has Much To Learn About America

Preet Bharara waged a war on insider trading. 

One battle took out former McKinsey head Rajat Gupta, who has yet not engineered a comeback, at least in the US. After all, he played cute with the establishment such as Goldman Sachs. His homeland India has been more forgiving. Isn’t it ironic that someone who shared his ethnic background did him in.

Another victory for the once-so-hot Bharara had been head of hedge fund the Galleon Group Raj Rajaratnam who, reports Bloomberg, also is struggling for a comeback. He is now out of prison.

What had fascinated both the legal and the financial worlds during Raj-Raj's trial was the "mosaic defense." That purported an alternate theory to how the defendant accessed information about financial developments. Instead of hustling confidential data from those such as Gupta, it was conjected by defense lawyer Jim Walden that Raj-Raj put together bits and pieces of what his genius had picked up from the overall goings-on out there. Also it had been assumed that an edge for the defense was that the jury would not understand the complexities of Wall Street. 

No-go. Raj-Raj was convicted on all 14 counts.

Because he is banned from managing others’ investments he operates his family office investment business which he calls Synamon.

Meanwhile, he is focused on a reputational bounce-back. Like Michael Milken he is engaging in philanthropy, including for his homeland Sri Lanka. Many of us recall how Paul Weiss Wall Street litigation-transactional powerhouse Brad Karp orchestrated Milken’s defense. Sure, Milken did serve time in the slammer but it could have been much worse. Now Milken hosts the Davos equivalent financial conferences. He also received a pardon.

In addition, Raj-Raj has published a book “Uneven Justice” in December 2021 – yes, fairly recently. On Amazon it has received 103 consumer reviewers, giving it about a 4.7 rating. But, come on, we can all scout up those on our networks to gush. The Amazon ranking of 104,952 isn’t a disaster. But it could be better. The expose on Wall Street and Big Law “The Caesar’s Palace Coup,” published in March 2021, is at 20,274.

An impediment to a comeback, as with Gupta, is that Raj-Raj is absorbed in arguing that he is innocent. How naïve, at least in America.

We are a nation built on figuring out how to bypass the traditional rules. That’s how that band of misfit Puritans developed what became the top-dog international economy. They conjured up their own rules. When lines are crossed, brandname lawyers, ranging from Karp to Alan Dershowitz, analyze that conduct through innovative legal perspectives. All that has made law a major source of entertainment in America.

A more likely strategy for a comeback is if Raj-Raj positioned and packaged himself as a financial rogue player. America could embrace that version of the anti-hero. We have profound respect and even affection for anti-hero Tony Soprano.

Raj-Raj can tap into the collective unconscious of America through the Tarot. It opens up all those sources of information and insight not available through tradtional pathways. In April 2021, The New York Times saluted that tool for both personal and professional life.

(Entertainment purposes only. One-card career reading for $30. Payment by PayPal or Zelle. Please schedule appointment with Jane Your Tarot Reader at janegenova374@gmail.com or text 203-468-8579.)