Hundreds of prominent businessmen and humanitarians including Bill Gates and Kofi Annan have come out to support ex-Goldman Sachs Group director Rajat Gupta who will be sentenced on Oct. 24 for insider trading.
Microsoft's co-founder Bill Gates and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan are among more than 200 people of good reputation who have written letters to District Judge Jed Rakoff urging him to show leniency for Gupta's lifetime of good deeds.
With 11 days to go for the judgment for leaking stock tips to his friend and business associate, hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam about, Gupta fights for a lighter sentence with the backing of the powerful lot.
Gates who had worked with Gupta when he was chair of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, urged the judge for a lenient sentencing and wrote, "many millions of people are leading better lives - or are alive at all - thanks to the efforts he so ably supported," Reuters reported.
"I urge you to recognize Rajat for the good he has done in the world, to give him the credit that he deserves for helping others and to take into account his efforts to improve the lives of millions of people," Annan wrote the judge.
The letters were written by his family, friends, academics and corporate heads including DLF Chairman Kushal Pal Singh, Reliance Industries Chairman Mukesh Ambani and Leonard Lauder, the chairman emeritus of Estee Lauder Cos.
While he was convicted in insider trading, Gupta was found not guilty of revealing the quarterly earnings of Procter & Gamble Co in January 2009 where he served as a board member then.
At the end of a four-week trial, a Manhattan federal jury ruled that Gupta is guilty of tipping Rajratnam on the boardroom secrets of Goldman Sach including information on Warren Buffett-owned Berkshire Hathaway's $5 billion investment. Rajratnam is serving an 11-year sentence at a federal prison in Massachusetts,
Gupta, the most powerful of all the 69 convicted back in 2009 in a nationwide crackdown on insider trading, had a high profile corporate life as he served at the boards of Goldman Sachs Group, Procter & Gamble Co, Rockefeller Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and was a managing partner of McKinsey & Co.
