Rajaratnam defence team plans to assail Kumar's 'monstrous lie'

Last week, under questioning by a prosecutor, former McKinsey & Co director Anil Kumar told jurors that he was pressured by Raj Rajaratnam to leak stock tips. This week, defence lawyers will try in cross-examination to depict Kumar as a “monstrous” liar.

Kumar is the first of several government witnesses to testify that he leaked stock tips to Rajaratnam, the co-founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund who is on trial for trading on inside tips. For two and a half hours on March 10, Kumar told federal jurors in Manhattan about his decades-long friendship with Rajaratnam and his reason for spilling the secrets of McKinsey clients in return for $2.7 million in secret payments from Galleon.

Kumar’s direct testimony resumes today. He’s expected to testify that he tipped Rajaratnam about transactions involving Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), EBay, Cisco Systems, Business Objects, Samsung, Spansion and other companies, according to court records. After that, defence lawyers will cross-examine Kumar to “chip away” at his account, which appears “really hurtful” to Rajaratnam, said Andrew Stoltmann, a securities lawyer in Chicago.

Rajaratnam is on trial in the largest crackdown on hedge-fund insider trading in US history.