Rajat Gupta Still Guilty Of The Thing He’s Been Guilty Of For Almost Seven Years

We can’t turn the clock back to June 14, 2012, and neither can the former McKinsey chief turned insider trader.

Author:: Jon Shazar
Publish date:: Jan 7, 2019
Updated on: Jan 14, 2019

By World Economic Forum [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Rajat Gupta is not allowed to serve on any boards of directors. And even if he could, it’s not likely there are too many publicly-traded companies eager to give Raj Rajaratnam’s former 23-second man a seat at the boardroom table. Even his oldest and closest friends don’t want to work with him. Long story short, the former McKinsey & Co. chief has got some free time on his hands. And he’s spending a lot of it on his chief hobby these days, which is clearing his name from that little insider-trading conviction that earned him the hospitality of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons for a couple of years.

He took up his new pastime around the time he moved to the federal prison camp in Ayer, Mass. In spite of nearly five years of practice, however, he’s still not very good at it.

Gupta, who was released from prison in 2016 after serving 19 months, argued that the conviction should be thrown out because U.S. prosecutors failed to prove he got a personal benefit for passing tips to his friend, billionaire hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam….
In the ruling on Monday, a three-judge panel rejected Gupta’s claims that he was actually innocent of the charges and disagreed that the jury was improperly instructed.

If at first (or fifth or whatever) you don’t succeed and all that. Plus, you know, life is a journey, and not a destination, even if that destination is as appealing as not being a convicted felon anymore. And since Rajat’s technically a Florida resident now, that doesn’t even mean he can’t vote anymore. Baby steps, buddy.