One of the best-known executives on Wall Street could be picked up as a surprising government witness at the high-profile criminal trial of Raj Rajaratnam, the Wall Street Journal reports. People familiar with the matter have told the paper that Goldman Sachs’s CEO Lloyd Blankfein has agreed to testify on behalf of the US government at the upcoming trial of Rajaratnam, the billionaire hedge-fund manager and founder of the Galleon Group, who is facing 14 counts of securities fraud and conspiracy in one of the largest insider-trading cases of a generation. Another 26 defendants in the case have already pleaded guilty. According to the paper, Blankfein could establish an important link between information shared among Goldman board members and executives with the former Goldman director Rajat Gupta. Prosecutors are alleging that Rajaratnam obtained this inside information about Goldman in October 2008. A separate civil administrative proceeding filed this week saw the Securities and Exchange Commission allege that Gupta had passed along inside information about Goldman to Rajaratnam.

This entry was posted by Izabella Kaminska on Friday, March 4th, 2011 at 10:11 and is featured in The Lunch Wrap (4 Mar 2011) . Tagged with Galleon, goldman sachs, hedge funds, lloyd blankfein, Raj rajaratnam, sec. Edit this entry.