Bill Gates, Kofi Annan urge lenient sentencing for Rajat Gupta

Microsoft Corp Co-founder Bill Gates and former United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan asked a judge to show leniency in 11 days when he sentences ex-Goldman Sachs Group Inc director Rajat Gupta for insider trading.

Gates and Annan were among more than 200 supporters seeking mercy for Gupta, citing his lifetime of good deeds. He would be sentenced on October 24 for leaking stock tips to hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam. The letters were made public yesterday by US District Judge Jed Rakoff in Manhattan.

“I urge you to recognise Rajat for the good that he has done in this world, to give him the credit that he deserves for helping others, and to take into account his effort to improve the lives of millions of people,” Annan said of Gupta’s work to reform management of the UN.

“I wanted to add my voice to those of other friends and colleagues of Rajat Gupta who are writing to you in order to round out Rajat’s profile,” Gates said of Gupta’s service as chairman of an organisation fighting AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria.

Gupta is the most prominent of the 69 people convicted since a nationwide crackdown on insider trading began in August 2009. Besides his tenure at Goldman Sachs, he served as managing partner of McKinsey & Co from 1994 to 2003 and on the boards of Procter & Gamble Co, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

June conviction
Gupta, 63, was convicted in June of three counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy. While securities fraud carries a maximum prison term of 20 years, Gupta is likely to be sentenced to fewer years under federal guidelines.

After a four-week trial, a federal jury in Manhattan found Gupta guilty of leaking tips to Rajaratnam, 55, about New York-based Goldman Sachs, including information about a $5-billion investment by Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Inc on September 23, 2008, and a tip on a quarterly loss. Rajaratnam is serving 11 years in prison for trading on tips from Gupta and others.

Letter writers included Gupta’s family and former associates in the worlds of academia, business and charity.

They included Kushal Pal Singh, the billionaire chairman of DLF Ltd, India’s largest developer; Leonard Lauder, the chairman emeritus of Estee Lauder Cos; and Mukesh Ambani, India’s richest man and the chairman of Mumbai-based Reliance Industries Ltd, the world’s largest refining complex.