Insider Trading Scandal Rattles Silicon Valley and South Asia
Two prominent Indian-Americans, along with a Sri Lanka born billionaire, have been charged in what U.S. prosecutors say is the biggest insider-trading case in a generation. The scandal is now reverberating in South Asia, particularly the island nation of Sri Lanka.
It is estimated that billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of hedge fund Galleon Group under arrest in New York on charges of insider trading, has invested more than $150 million in Sri Lankan shares. Even rumors of his trades can send the market up or down. Born in Sri Lanka, he was educated at the prestigious Wharton business school in Pennsylvania and went to set up a hedge fund for boutique investment bank Needham. The hedge fund was spun off with Mr Rajaratnam at its head in 1997. Galleon was well known for its extensive research reports, according to the New York Times, and for having many senior technology executives as its investors.
In 2007, there was a minor scandal involving accusations of insider trading against Pakistani-American Atiq Raza, but it was settled out of court with the SEC when Mr. Raza agreed to pay $3 million fine. Under the terms of the agreement, Mr. Raza was also barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for five years, and he was permanently enjoined from future violations of the federal securities laws.
The Wall Street Journal reports that fears about the future of Rajaratnam's and Galleon's investments in Sri Lanka caused a major selloff Monday. After losing about 3% during early trading, the Colombo Stock Exchange benchmark All-Share Price Index ended the day at 3082.91, down 1.6%. Shares in which Mr. Rajaratnam or Galleon hold major stakes were among the biggest losers.
Mr Rajaratnam is estimated to be worth about $1.3bn by Forbes magazine. Galleon, the hedge fund he founded, had managed up to $7bn in assets. He was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2007 for allegedly funding the Tamil Tiger rebel movement in Sri Lanka, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka said on Monday.
He was among several wealthy Sri Lankans who donated to the US-based charity, the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization, which may have been funneled to the Tamil Tigers.
In addition to Sri Lankan Raj Rajaratnam, 52, the accused include two Indian-Americans, Rajiv Goel, 51, of Los Altos, of Intel's treasury department, and Anil Kumar, 51, of Santa Clara, an executive at the global consulting group McKinsey & Co. Both were rising stars in the high-tech constellation of Silicon Valley. Locally established and internationally connected, the two men's work and reputations stretched to India and back, as they moved in the rarified air of global big business, according to a report in San Jose Mercury News. Kumar and Goel are both charter members of TIE, the Indus Entrepreneur, an organization of mostly Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley.
Goel and Kumar supplied information about their portfolio firms or clients to co-conspirators, according to the complaint, who in turn made profitable trades. Kumar was arrested in New York, then later released on a $5 million bond, while Goel appeared briefly before a federal judge in San Francisco Friday before reportedly posting a $300,000 cash bail and a $100,000 bond. Both of them have been put on leave by their respective firms. The investigation is likely to lead to insiders at several other firms beyond Intel, IBM and McKinsey.
In India, where Kumar had been heavily involved in the Indian School of Business, embarrased officials announced he had voluntarily taken an indefinite leave of absence from the board because of the scandal.
And like Kumar, Goel's Indian roots were deep. Before joining Intel, he worked in finance for one of India's largest business house, the Aditya Birla Group. With an MBA from the Wharton School, he also served as a corporate banker with Bank of America in San Francisco and managed a large portfolio of securities for Metropolitan Life out of New York, according to Mercury News.
The lead prosecutor Preetinder S. Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, also of Indian descent, said “This is not a garden-variety insider trading case." He alleged that the scheme made more than $20 million in illegal profits since 2006. According to the NY Times, Bharara, 40, was born in Ferozepur, India, and he was an infant when his parents immigrated to the United States in 1970. He grew up in Monmouth County, N.J., and graduated from Harvard in 1990 and Columbia Law School in 1993. A rising star in the Democratic Party, Bharara supervises over 200 lawyers who prosecute high-profile cases in New York City.
There have been other recent white collar crime cases against Indian-Americans. Earlier this month, an Indian-American lawyer in Los Angeles, Sandeep Baweja, 39, agreed to plead guilty to two felony charges relating to a scheme where he took more than $2 million awarded in a class action suit and lost it all on the stock market.
Last year, Vijay Taneja, an Indian-American investor and producer of Bollywood movies, was convicted of mortgage fraud in the United States.
This is, indeed, a sad day for many people of South Asian descent in the United States, particularly in Silicon Valley. Let's hope the accused receive a fair trial amidst the wave of negative publicity surrounding the case.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Atiq Raza Pays Fine, Settles Insider Trading Charges
US Mortgage Fraud Funds Bollywood
Insider Scandal Hurts Sri Lanka Stocks
Murder-Suicide in Silicon Valley
Bigotry Bedevils Silicon Valley Eatery
Pakistani-American: Mr. Thirty Percent of Silicon Valley
It is estimated that billionaire Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of hedge fund Galleon Group under arrest in New York on charges of insider trading, has invested more than $150 million in Sri Lankan shares. Even rumors of his trades can send the market up or down. Born in Sri Lanka, he was educated at the prestigious Wharton business school in Pennsylvania and went to set up a hedge fund for boutique investment bank Needham. The hedge fund was spun off with Mr Rajaratnam at its head in 1997. Galleon was well known for its extensive research reports, according to the New York Times, and for having many senior technology executives as its investors.
In 2007, there was a minor scandal involving accusations of insider trading against Pakistani-American Atiq Raza, but it was settled out of court with the SEC when Mr. Raza agreed to pay $3 million fine. Under the terms of the agreement, Mr. Raza was also barred from serving as an officer or director of a public company for five years, and he was permanently enjoined from future violations of the federal securities laws.
The Wall Street Journal reports that fears about the future of Rajaratnam's and Galleon's investments in Sri Lanka caused a major selloff Monday. After losing about 3% during early trading, the Colombo Stock Exchange benchmark All-Share Price Index ended the day at 3082.91, down 1.6%. Shares in which Mr. Rajaratnam or Galleon hold major stakes were among the biggest losers.
Mr Rajaratnam is estimated to be worth about $1.3bn by Forbes magazine. Galleon, the hedge fund he founded, had managed up to $7bn in assets. He was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2007 for allegedly funding the Tamil Tiger rebel movement in Sri Lanka, the Central Bank of Sri Lanka said on Monday.
He was among several wealthy Sri Lankans who donated to the US-based charity, the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization, which may have been funneled to the Tamil Tigers.
In addition to Sri Lankan Raj Rajaratnam, 52, the accused include two Indian-Americans, Rajiv Goel, 51, of Los Altos, of Intel's treasury department, and Anil Kumar, 51, of Santa Clara, an executive at the global consulting group McKinsey & Co. Both were rising stars in the high-tech constellation of Silicon Valley. Locally established and internationally connected, the two men's work and reputations stretched to India and back, as they moved in the rarified air of global big business, according to a report in San Jose Mercury News. Kumar and Goel are both charter members of TIE, the Indus Entrepreneur, an organization of mostly Indian-Americans in Silicon Valley.
Goel and Kumar supplied information about their portfolio firms or clients to co-conspirators, according to the complaint, who in turn made profitable trades. Kumar was arrested in New York, then later released on a $5 million bond, while Goel appeared briefly before a federal judge in San Francisco Friday before reportedly posting a $300,000 cash bail and a $100,000 bond. Both of them have been put on leave by their respective firms. The investigation is likely to lead to insiders at several other firms beyond Intel, IBM and McKinsey.
In India, where Kumar had been heavily involved in the Indian School of Business, embarrased officials announced he had voluntarily taken an indefinite leave of absence from the board because of the scandal.
And like Kumar, Goel's Indian roots were deep. Before joining Intel, he worked in finance for one of India's largest business house, the Aditya Birla Group. With an MBA from the Wharton School, he also served as a corporate banker with Bank of America in San Francisco and managed a large portfolio of securities for Metropolitan Life out of New York, according to Mercury News.
The lead prosecutor Preetinder S. Bharara, the US Attorney for the Southern District of New York, also of Indian descent, said “This is not a garden-variety insider trading case." He alleged that the scheme made more than $20 million in illegal profits since 2006. According to the NY Times, Bharara, 40, was born in Ferozepur, India, and he was an infant when his parents immigrated to the United States in 1970. He grew up in Monmouth County, N.J., and graduated from Harvard in 1990 and Columbia Law School in 1993. A rising star in the Democratic Party, Bharara supervises over 200 lawyers who prosecute high-profile cases in New York City.
There have been other recent white collar crime cases against Indian-Americans. Earlier this month, an Indian-American lawyer in Los Angeles, Sandeep Baweja, 39, agreed to plead guilty to two felony charges relating to a scheme where he took more than $2 million awarded in a class action suit and lost it all on the stock market.
Last year, Vijay Taneja, an Indian-American investor and producer of Bollywood movies, was convicted of mortgage fraud in the United States.
This is, indeed, a sad day for many people of South Asian descent in the United States, particularly in Silicon Valley. Let's hope the accused receive a fair trial amidst the wave of negative publicity surrounding the case.
Related Links:
Haq's Musings
Atiq Raza Pays Fine, Settles Insider Trading Charges
US Mortgage Fraud Funds Bollywood
Insider Scandal Hurts Sri Lanka Stocks
Murder-Suicide in Silicon Valley
Bigotry Bedevils Silicon Valley Eatery
Pakistani-American: Mr. Thirty Percent of Silicon Valley
Comments
During the July 29, 2008, call, Messrs. Rajaratnam and Gupta deride Mr. Kumar's aptitude for doing investment deals. "I'm getting a feeling that he's trying to, just...be a mini-Rajat, right?" Mr. Rajaratnam says on the tape. "Without bringing anything new to the party, right?"
"Yeah, yeah," says Mr. Gupta, who previously oversaw Mr. Kumar as managing director at McKinsey.
Mr. Kumar had testified that Mr. Rajaratnam had given him more than $2 million through offshore accounts for inside information on McKinsey clients.
"Honestly, Rajat, I'm giving him a million dollars a year for doing literally nothing," Mr. Rajaratnam tells Mr. Gupta on the July 2008 call.
"I think you're being very generous," Mr. Gupta replies. "But he should sometimes say thank you for that, you know?"
In the same conversation, Mr. Gupta called fellow Goldman directors "an opportunistic group," saying that though they believed commercial banking was a low-return business, they might buy Wachovia Corp. if it were "a good deal."
At other times, Mr. Rajaratnam turns around and talks about Mr. Gupta. In a May 28, 2008, call, Mr. Rajaratnam gossiped with Mr. Kumar about how Mr. Gupta had overextended himself with corporate board positions and other responsibilities.
"You know that his family suffers," Mr. Rajaratnam says on the tape. "I asked him, 'So are you outsourcing your wedding or how are you doing it?'" Mr. Gupta's daughter was married a few months later, according to online photos of the event.
In an Aug. 15, 2008, call, Mr. Kumar speculates that Mr. Gupta is being "greedy" by pursuing a possible job at a private-equity firm run by wealthy investor Henry Kravis, so he can be "in that circle."
"That's a billionaire circle, right?" asks Mr. Rajaratnam. "Goldman is like the hundreds-of-millionaires circle." Mr. Rajaratnam then suggests Mr. Gupta wants to make $100 million "without doing a lot of work."
Messrs. Rajaratnam and Kumar also speculate about Mr. Gupta's "personal family crisis," and discuss his wife's unhappiness with his travel schedule and gossip about another couple's marriage as they make plans to meet for dinner at Manhattan's posh Nobu restaurant.
A decade after hiring Ellen Pao as his technical chief of staff, prominent venture capitalist John Doerr faced her in court Tuesday, defending Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers against Pao’s claims of sex discrimination and retaliation.
In more than five hours of testimony, Doerr retraced Pao’s trajectory through Kleiner Perkins, from a staffer who described herself as his “surrogate daughter,” to a disgruntled junior partner who felt she was repeatedly snubbed for promotions and choice assignments.
With Pao’s mother watching from the front row, Doerr said he wanted Ajit Nazre, a Kleiner Perkins partner who engaged in a consensual affair with Pao in 2006 to be fired. The trial is taking place in San Francisco Superior Court.
Doerr said he ultimately agreed that Nazre not be fired because other partners wanted to keep him and because Pao and Nazre said they could work together.
“You relented,” Pao’s attorney, Alan Exelrod, said. “That was a factor,” Doerr said. But, he added, the firm told Nazre, “if he did this again he’d be terminated.”
Kleiner Perkins partners reduced Nazre’s bonus in 2007 as punishment for the affair. “But his biggest punishment was that I told him I’d lost confidence in his ability to be a leader of the firm, and he’d have to regain that confidence,” Doerr told Exelrod.
The following year, Nazre was promoted to senior partner, even though Doerr said he had reservations about Nazre’s trustworthiness. “I don’t remember how I voted, but the partnership voted, and [Partner Emeritus] Ray Lane was a strong supporter,” Doerr said.
Doerr hired Pao in 2005 as part of what Doerr called “Team JD,” which meant she helped him manage his time. Early on, he gave her advice on areas where the firm though she could improve. Pao tended to be dismissive and had conflicts with other partners, Doerr said, including with another female partner, Trae Vassallo.
Nonetheless, he praised her work. “You have contributed extensively and I’m delighted that you chose to join KPCB,” her first review said.
After a couple of years, Pao became less happy at the firm and talked to Doerr about leaving. She offered suggestions on ways that Kleiner Perkins could improve. “Honesty with partners,” was one suggestion, according to a document shown in court. “Quality in our work” was another.
In June 2007, Pao told Doerr about the affair with Nazre. She also complained that a third partner, Randy Komisar, had given her a book of poetry on Valentine’s Day and asked her out to dinner when his wife was out of town.
Doerr told Exelrod that it was common to give gifts at the firm and he didn’t ask why Pao would be upset about the book.
In 2009, he still thought highly enough of her that he thought the firm should work hard to keep her when she got an offer from a rival firm, Google Ventures GOOGL -1.08%.
She would be given “more carry, comparable income and be given more responsibility in a lesser firm, and if I were them I would seize the opportunity to hire her,” he wrote in an e-mail to partners Ray Lane and Ted Schlein.
Schlein offered Pao a position on the digital investing team and she decided to stay at Kleiner Perkins. But problems developed there too. Pao had urged Kleiner Perkins to invest in patent firm RPX, which it did. But the board seat, which Ms. Pao wanted, went to Komisar.
“Did you tell her that Randy needed a win?” Exelrod asked Doerr.
“I told her her job as a junior partner was to support the KP team and Randy and if she couldn’t do that she should do something else,” Doerr said.
“Didn’t you say he needed a win?” Exelrod asked.
“Randy and Kleiner needed a win. Everybody needs wins. I could use some wins,” said Doerr, with a smile.
Doerr said he introduced Pao to his family, met her family, coached her and hired coaches for her, including a speech coach so she could learn to communicate better with other partners and advance her ideas.
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/03/03/as-pao-case-continues-john-doerr-confronts-surrogate-daughter/
A 24-year-old Fremont man was arrested Wednesday in connection with a phone scam targeting elderly residents across the country, Santa Clara police said today.
Police in Richland, Montana, contacted Santa Clara police on Wednesday to tell them a 77-year-old man had been instructed to send $20,000 in bail money for his grandson to a Santa Clara address.
Officers set up surveillance at the pickup location and saw Vamshidhar Reddy Kotla arrive and retrieve the package at 6:04 a.m., police said. Kotla was detained and later arrested.
Police identified four other victims during their investigation and retrieved $28,000 in cash from the suspect's home. Kotla is believed to be a member of a group which targets and runs scams on elderly residents.
Police said residents should be wary of calls demanding money over the phone and call police at (408) 615-4700 when in doubt.
Further information from the state attorney general about scams involving elders can be found at
https://oag.ca.gov/consumers/general/seniors.
A former Tesla employee from India has been charged by US federal prosecutors for allegedly embezzling $9.3 million (Rs67 crore) from the company, a statement from the US department of justice (DoJ) shows.
The accused, Salil Parulekar, 32, was a group manager for global supply management and industrialisation at the electric-car maker’s Palo Alto headquarters till December last year. On Nov. 08, a grand jury indicted him on charges that he fraudulently diverted payments from an existing supplier of the company to a former one.
The DoJ statement says that in January 2017, the accused learned that Tesla had ended its contract with SHW, a German automotive supplier. “Parulekar allegedly knew the termination meant that Tesla was withholding future payments to SHW and that Parulekar was not authorised to contravene this decision,” the DoJ statement says. But, he allegedly diverted a series of payments meant for Taiwan-based Hota, another supplier to Tesla, and “caused them to be paid to SHW.”
The indictment contends that Parulekar did so “by falsifying invoices; creating fraudulent accounts payable documents, such as bank account information and wire instructions; and impersonating Hota employees.” He allegedly stole the identity of a Hota employee to deceive Tesla’s accounts division into switching the bank account information of Hota and SHW.
SHW declined to comment to queries from Quartz, and an email sent to Tesla did not elicit any response.
The probe was conducted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The US attorney has charged Parulekar with nine counts of wire fraud (legal speak for financial fraud involving telecommunications) and one count of aggravated identity theft. If convicted, he can be awarded a maximum sentence of 20 years, along with a fine of $2.5 million, under US law.
Parulekar left India in 2008 to pursue a masters in industrial engineering from North Carolina State University. He is a graduate of Mumbai’s KJ Somaiya College of Engineering. He joined Tesla in 2013, and became a group manager in October last year.
https://www.ndtv.com/indians-abroad/indian-origin-man-neil-chandran-arrested-in-us-for-alleged-45-million-investment-fraud-3117176
Neil Chandran, of Las Vegas in Nevada, was arrested on Wednesday in Los Angeles, the Department of Justice said.
According to the indictment, Mr Chandran owned a group of technology companies that he used in a scheme to defraud investors by falsely promising extremely high returns on the premise that one or more of his companies, operated under the banner of "ViRSE," was about to be acquired by a consortium of wealthy buyers.
Mr Chandran's companies -- which included Free Vi Lab, Studio Vi Inc., ViDelivery Inc, ViMarket Inc, and Skalex USA Inc, among others -- developed virtual-world technologies, including their own cryptocurrency, for use in the companies' own metaverse.
The indictment alleges that Mr Chandran caused other individuals to make various materially false and misleading representations to investors, including that investors in his companies would soon receive extremely high returns when one or more of those companies was purchased by a group of wealthy buyers.
In fact, according to the indictment, there was no such buyer group that was about to purchase the companies for the claimed returns; a substantial portion of the funds was misappropriated for other business ventures and the personal benefit of Mr Chandran and others, including the purchase of luxury cars and real estate; and there were no prominent billionaires involved in purchasing Mr Chandran's companies.
Brijesh Goel is one of nine defendants charged by Manhattan federal prosecutors in four insider-trading cases
https://www.wsj.com/articles/former-goldman-sachs-banker-charged-in-insider-trading-scheme-11658774443
A former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. vice president was charged in an insider-trading scheme in which he allegedly profited by tipping off a close friend to confidential information about coming mergers and acquisitions connected to the bank.
Federal prosecutors accused Brijesh Goel of relaying information from internal Goldman communications about potential takeovers the firm was considering financing. Mr. Goel’s friend traded on the tips, typically using a relative’s brokerage account to buy call options that would become profitable if the stock price of a company targeted for acquisition rose, according to an indictment.
Mr. Goel was one of nine defendants charged in four unrelated insider-trading cases announced Monday by federal prosecutors in Manhattan. All of the cases involved the alleged use of nonpublic information about mergers and acquisitions. The other defendants included a former congressman, a former FBI trainee and technology-company executives.
“We are keenly interested in sending a message that insider trading is still around, we are still around, and we are going to enforce it when we find it,” Damian Williams, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York, said at a news conference Monday.
The four schemes collectively resulted in millions of dollars in illegal profits, prosecutors said. The Securities and Exchange Commission, which filed parallel civil charges, said three of the cases originated from an enforcement unit that uses electronic databases to detect suspicious trading patterns.
Prosecutors charged Mr. Goel with securities fraud. They also alleged that Mr. Goel, who left Goldman in 2021, sought to obstruct a grand jury investigation into the scheme by deleting electronic communications between him and the friend.
A lawyer for Mr. Goel didn’t respond to a request for comment.
A Goldman spokeswoman said the bank is cooperating with the Justice Department and the SEC.
“The 2017 and 2018 insider trading alleged by the government is egregious and illegal conduct,” the spokeswoman said. “The firm condemns such behavior, which violates our standards of conduct and business principles.”
Mr. Goel most recently worked at Apollo Global Management Inc. An Apollo spokeswoman said the firm learned of the allegations against Mr. Goel on Monday and immediately placed him on indefinite leave.
Mr. Goel and the friend often discussed confidential information over games of squash, and made about $280,000 illegally, according to the indictment. Prosecutors said the information was used to make trades tied to at least seven deals involving companies including Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc., T-Mobile US Inc. and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc.
In a separate case, prosecutors charged former Rep. Stephen Buyer, a Republican who represented districts in Indiana from 1993 through 2011, with four counts of securities fraud. While doing consulting work after he left Congress, Mr. Buyer engaged in insider trading in connection with two different mergers, prosecutors said.
In one, Mr. Buyer provided consulting services to T-Mobile, which in 2018 publicly announced it would merge with Sprint Corp. Mr. Buyer learned of confidential information about the merger from a T-Mobile government-affairs executive, according to the indictment. The indictment also said that the unnamed executive and Mr. Buyer spoke on the phone and played golf immediately before the former congressman purchased Sprint stock.
Andrew Goldstein, a lawyer for Mr. Buyer, said his client was innocent. “His stock trades were lawful,” Mr. Goldstein said. “He looks forward to being quickly vindicated.”
A T-Mobile spokeswoman said the company cooperated with the government’s investigation.
https://www.deccanherald.com/national/americans-duped-into-losing-10-billion-by-illegal-indian-call-centres-in-2022-report-1175156.html @deccanherald
After several incidents were reported in 2022, the FBI has now deputed a permanent representative at the US embassy in New Delhi. The representative will work closely with the CBI, Interpol and the Delhi Police to bust these gangs that have put India under the threat to be termed as the hub of such illegal call centres.
Americans lost a total of $10.2 billion in 2022 so far, which is a 47 per cent increase from 2021’s $6.9 billion, to such fraud calls. FBI’s South Asia head Suhel Daud told the publication that "romance-related" frauds reported were worth Rs 8,000 crore in 2021 and Rs 8,000 crore in the last 11 months of 2022. Losses due to "tech support" crimes were as much as $3 billion in the last two years – $347 million in 2021 and $781 million in 2022 so far.
“It may not be a national security concern yet, but the reputation (of a country) is involved, and we don’t want India to suffer on that count,” Daud told the publication. He also noted that the FBI’s website has registered 8.5 lakh complaints in 2021 and over 7.8 lakh complaints so far in 2022 in regard to internet crimes. Those complaints included cyber crime related to investment ($3 billion), business email compromise ($2.4 billion), personal data breach ($1.2 billion), romance($1 billion) and tech support ($781 million).
https://www.moneylife.in/article/prateek-gupta-the-big-indian-defaulter-behind-a-500-million-international-commodities-fraud/70001.html
We take great pride in the fact that many successful Indians are occupying corner offices at the world’s largest and most powerful corporate houses and every action of theirs makes news in India. The flip side is that people of Indian origin will also hit the headlines for zip and enterprise of another kind—for gigantic fraud, running mega scams and even market manipulation. These stories are buried in tiny reports and rarely make it to front pages or television debates.
For instance, how many of us remember that the ‘Flash Crash’ of 6 May 2010, which wiped out a trillion dollars in five minutes, was the handiwork of a young, reclusive Indian called Navinder Singh Sarao, trading alone out of west London. Those who want to know the fascinating details should read Flash Crash by Liam Vaughan who describes the global manhunt to catch Sarao, characterised as a ‘trading savant’.
Another Indian who is making news abroad, but doesn’t figure on our media channels, is Prateek Gupta of Ushdev International Ltd, despite his history of cheating several banks in India. He has recently acquired the dubious cred of having cheated Trafigura, a global commodities trading giant, of a whopping US$577mn (million) in a nickel deal. This is when his admitted dues to Indian banks were over Rs3,500 crore and total liabilities around Rs4,205 crore. He was being investigated by the central bureau of investigation (CBI).
So what is Prateek Gupta’s story? Let’s start with why he is in the news today.
Trafigura Scammed of US$500 Million
On 9th February, the global commodity trading giant Trafigura group Pte issued a press release which said it had “discovered a systematic fraud committed by a group of companies” to the tune of US$577mn by companies controlled by Prateek Gupta, in connection with a deal to purchase about 25,000 tonnes of ‘containerised nickel’. Trafigura had entered into a ‘transit finance’ deal, or what would be called a ready-forward deal, where it would buy nickel from companies connected to Mr Gupta and sell them back to the same companies in future at a higher price that covers interest cost.
Sometime after October 2022, Trafigura inspected eight shipping containers and found that they did not contain nickel or even nickel alloy. As it expanded its inspection to a few hundred containers (out of over 1,100 covered by the deal), it discovered more of the same. Instead of nickel or nickel alloy, whose prices have been shooting up since the Russia-Ukraine conflict, the containers contained carbon steel, whose value is a fraction that of nickel.
The Trafigura group, which operates across commodity businesses, employs 12,000 people across 156 countries, rushed to court in February and obtained a ‘worldwide freezing order’ of US$625mn against Mr Gupta and his companies, led by TMT Metals Holdings Ltd based in London. The London high court order restrained individuals and businesses from dealing with Mr Gupta’s assets anywhere in the world. It is open to challenge by the Gupta group and the hearings will commence soon. Reports in the international media suggest that Trafigura has had a legitimate business relationship with Mr Gupta’s companies since 2015.
Prior to this, Mr Gupta has inflicted even greater losses on Indian public sector banks (PSBs). It would seem that he was building his international commodity businesses through money diverted from the Indian company. He bought TMT Metals AG, a trading firm, in 2016. He also has companies in Singapore, Malaysia and Switzerland.
Sanchari Ghosh
https://www.livemint.com/news/india/how-swami-nithyananda-s-fake-country-kailasa-fooled-30-us-cities-with-sister-city-scam-explained-11679042510469.html
Controversial godman Swami Nithyananda and his fictional country "Kailasa" is in the news again and this time, for duping the city of Newark in New Jersey, United States. Apparently, Newark. admitted to falling victim to a scam that led them to become a "Sister City" with a fake Hindu nation.
The incident occurred when Mayor Ras Baraka invited representatives of Kailasa to Newark City Hall for a "cultural trade agreement," only to discover later that Kailasa was not a real country.
Despite Newark's apparent commitment to partnering with diverse cultures to enrich each other with connectivity, support, and mutual respect, the city reportedly did not realize Kailasa's inauthenticity until after an official ceremony had already taken place.
Footage shows city officials signing documents and taking photographs during the ceremony to become a "Sister City" with "Kailasa."
Following the incident, the Newark City Council reportedly rescinded the agreement just days after signing the "Sister City" agreement papers. One city council member called the oversight "unacceptable" and said it "cannot happen any longer."
Newark is not the only city to sign the ‘Sister City’ deal…
The funny thing is as many as Newark is not the only city to sign this deal with Kailasa. As per the website of the United States of Kailasa, it has as many as 30 cities in the United States. And a Fox report said, most mayors have accepted of signing such deals.
How Kailasa got these cities to sign the deal?
The report cited, that the cities claimed that the ‘proclamation is not an endorsement but a response to a request’. Most of them further confirmed that ‘they did not very the information in the request’.
That means, Kailasa got them to sign the deal simply by requesting them to do so.
What is Kailasa?
'Kailasa' is a self-proclaimed country founded by controversial godman Nithyananda, who purchased an island off the coast of Ecuador and named it after a sacred site for Hindus. 'Kailasa' claims to be a movement founded by members of the Hindu Adi Shaivite minority community from Canada, the United States, and other countries. It offers a safe haven to all the world's practicing, aspiring, or persecuted Hindus.
However, 'Kailasa' is not recognized as a country by the United Nations or the international community, and it is considered a micronation. Despite this, the 'Kailasa' movement maintains a strong social media presence and claims to have various departments, including treasury, commerce, sovereign, housing, and human services, as well as a flag, a constitution, an economic system, a passport, and an emblem.
Probe found Ranga Dias manipulated data, including in a paper claiming the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor
https://www.wsj.com/science/university-rochester-ranga-dias-superconductor-misconduct-aa2f9fd4?st=GoDu5D&reflink=article_email_share
The president of the University of Rochester has recommended firing Ranga Dias, a star faculty member who claimed to have discovered a room-temperature superconductor, for research misconduct.
Rochester President Sarah Mangelsdorf made her recommendation in an August letter addressed to the chair and vice chair of the Rochester Board of Trustees. The Wall Street Journal has seen the letter.
“Please accept this as my recommendation that the Board of Trustees act to abrogate the contract of Dr. Ranga Dias as a faculty member of the University to include immediate termination of his employment,” she wrote.
As of Monday, Dias still holds appointments at the physics and mechanical-engineering departments, but no longer teaches classes or supervises students. A spokesperson for the Rochester, N.Y., university declined to comment on when, or if, the board would act on Mangelsdorf’s recommendation.
Dias’s bold scientific claims about the discovery of new superconductors—rare materials that pass electrical current without loss of energy—drew worldwide media coverage amid persistent allegations from his peers that he had manipulated data and plagiarized material.
A university investigation into his work completed in February found that he manipulated data in four studies, including in a blockbuster paper published in March 2023 in the journal Nature—and retracted a year ago—that claimed the discovery of a room-temperature superconductor. The investigation also found that Dias plagiarized material in a grant proposal to the National Science Foundation for nearly $795,000.
At least five papers in which he is a senior author have been retracted.
During the university’s monthslong investigation and subsequent internal review, Dias sued the university claiming the procedures were biased. A judge dismissed the case in April, stating it was premature for the court to weigh in while university actions, including a decision on Dias’s employment, were pending.
Dias didn’t respond to requests for comment. He has previously denied manipulating or misrepresenting data.
Dias joined the faculty at the University of Rochester in 2017, after a stint as a postdoctoral researcher at Harvard University. His new lab began publishing a string of papers on novel materials with unusual properties, including a potentially transformative superconductor.
Superconductors have the rare ability to conduct electrical current without losing energy. Materials known to do this require extremely low temperatures, extremely high pressures, or both—conditions that are expensive to maintain and scale. A material that behaves like a superconductor at ambient conditions could prompt a revolution in electronics and engineering.
by Sam Nunberg
https://www.newsweek.com/vivek-ramaswamy-fraud-always-has-been-opinion-1823853
Op Ed Writer Sam Nunberg is a lawyer and political consultant based in West Palm Beach, Fla. He previously served as an advisor to former President Donald Trump.
Let's start with the basics. Ramaswamy has funded his campaign through the sale of over $32 million in Roivant stock options in February of this year. This could lead one to believe that Roivant, based in Bermuda, is thriving and that Ramaswamy is a great entrepreneur. Except the company reported staggering losses of $1.2 billion in its financial report of March 2023. This isn't a one-time slump: In March 2022, when Ramaswamy was still Roivant's chairman and a major shareholder, the company reported an annual loss of $924.1 million.
Ramaswamy's defenders may argue that Roivant performed better during his tenure as CEO in 2021, but alas, the numbers tell a different story. The reality is that Roivant's finances were abysmal under Ramaswamy's watch. During his tenure in 2019, the company's net operating loss exceeded $530 million. By 2020, the losses had doubled to over $1 billion, accompanied by a 65 percent decline in revenue.
These numbers raise a puzzling question: How can a company consistently bleeding billions trade at over $10 a share?
The answer might lie in Ramaswamy's implementation of Roivant's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiative, called Roivant Social Ventures, during his CEO tenure. Launched in 2020 while Ramaswamy was still CEO, this initiative aimed to foster "DEI opportunities for future leaders in biopharma and biotech."
While Ramaswamy vocally opposes ESG principles, Roivant's major institutional investors—including Morgan Stanley, Viking Global, and BlackRock, the very firms he criticizes by name—are among its largest stakeholders, owning over 500 million shares. Ramaswamy himself holds more than 80 million shares, making him an essential partner of these major ESG funds.
In a deeply ironic twist, Ramaswamy's anti-"woke" campaign is being bankrolled by the profits reaped from the very policies he denounces.
Yet this irony is not the worst of it. In 2015, there was another sordid affair involving Ramaswamy, over Axovant Sciences Alzheimer's drug. In June 2015, Ramaswamy appeared on CNBC to praise the Axovant IPO, which soared to over $30 a share based on expectations surrounding its Alzheimer's drug, Intepirdine. The drug was touted as a "breakthrough," yet upon closer examination, this development fell apart.
Axovant had acquired the drug for $5 million in December 2014, six months before the IPO, after the majority of Phase 2 trials had "failed to meet their primary endpoints" in 2010. Ramaswamy devised a solution: His mother, Dr. Geetha Ramaswamy, conducted a new Phase 2 trial in 2015 involving "684 subjects." This trial conveniently claimed to demonstrate sufficient improvement to "support Phase 3" trials.
The aftermath was a triumphant $350 million IPO in 2015, followed by a drastic fall. By September 2017, the stock had plummeted 75 percent after Ramaswamy and his mother announced the Phase 3 trial's failure. Subsequent trials continued to disappoint, culminating in a 99 percent loss in value and a name change for the company.
While investors suffered significant losses, Ramaswamy profited from a higher media profile, IPO payouts, and the sale of remaining Axovant assets in 2020.
Ramaswamy's latest scam appears to be his run for president. The 38-year-old presidential candidate appears to have no serious interest in leading the nation. In fact, according to people who know Ramaswamy, the goal of his campaign seems to be to block Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' path to the nomination by running as a MAGA-adjacent candidate. Ramaswamy's deception has gone as far as hiring a writer to delete from his Wikipedia page his past ties to the Soros family and the creator of the mRNA vaccine.
https://thelogicalindian.com/apple-fires-185-telugu-speaking-employees-over-alleged-csr-scam/
Apple has terminated approximately 185 employees, predominantly Telugu-speaking, due to their alleged involvement in a fraudulent grants scheme linked to the company’s corporate social responsibility (CSR) programme. The employees allegedly collaborated with certain Telugu associations in the US to misuse Apple’s Grant Programme, resulting in funds being funneled back to them after donations were matched by Apple. The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is investigating the matter further, raising concerns about the integrity of non-profit organizations involved.
Fraudulent Scheme Uncovered
In a significant corporate scandal, Apple has dismissed 185 employees from its Bay Area office for their alleged participation in a fraudulent grants programme. These employees, primarily Telugu-speaking individuals, are accused of colluding with specific Telugu associations based in the United States to exploit Apple’s CSR initiatives. The scheme involved soliciting donations from employees under the guise of supporting non-profit organizations, which Apple would then match dollar-for-dollar as part of its commitment to community engagement.
Investigations revealed that these donations were manipulated, allowing funds to be redirected back to the employees after receiving matching contributions from Apple. An internal review by Apple’s Finance department led to the discovery of these irregularities, prompting a report to the IRS, which is now conducting an investigation into the matter.
Background on the Incident
This incident raises serious questions about the integrity of certain Telugu associations operating in the US and their role in this fraudulent activity. Reports indicate that these organizations regularly solicited donations from Telugu-speaking individuals within Apple’s workforce, exploiting the company’s CSR matching grants as part of a larger scheme. The fraudulent activities came to light when Apple’s Finance department identified discrepancies in donation records and alerted authorities. Following this revelation, Apple conducted an extensive internal audit that confirmed the misuse of its Grant Programme.
The implicated employees were reportedly given an ultimatum: resign due to alleged misconduct or face termination. This situation not only impacts the dismissed employees but also raises concerns about the accountability and transparency of non-profit organizations involved in the community.
Community Impact and Reactions
The fallout from this scandal extends beyond the terminated employees; it has sparked outrage and concern within both the tech community and among Telugu associations across the United States. Many are questioning how such a significant breach of trust could occur within a reputable company like Apple and what measures are in place to prevent similar incidents in the future.