Revisiting Criminal Insider Trading Liability

June 3, 2014

The insider trading conviction of Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam continues to ignite debate on the breadth of federal insider trading law. In affirming Rajaratnam’s conviction, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit relied on its precedent, broadly imposing criminal insider trading liability where a defendant has knowledge of insider information without evidence that he actually relied on the information in making a trade. That question, which is central to Rajaratnam’s petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court, is the topic of this article.