Free Republic

OCTOBER 17, 2009 Rajaratnam Surfaced in U.S. Terrorism Probe By EVAN PEREZ and MATTHEW ROSENBERG WASHINGTON—The hedge-fund billionaire charged as part of a vast insider-trading case surfaced in an earlier, separate probe into U.S. fundraising by a Sri Lankan terrorist group, people familiar with the probe said. As part of that investigation, federal agents said they uncovered documents showing that Raj Rajaratnam, founder of the Galleon Group, was among several wealthy Sri Lankans in the U.S. whose donations to a Maryland-based charity made their way to the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, according to people familiar with the probe. Raj...

January 3, 2010 Fishnet temptress Danielle Chiesi snagged by insider trading scandal Tony Allen-Mills in New York Her mother calls her “my angel”, and “the most honest human being in the whole world”. Yet federal investigators take a different view of Danielle Chiesi, a former beauty queen turned hedge-fund consultant, who has emerged at the centre of the biggest insider trading scandal to shake Wall Street for decades. The publication of federal indictments against the flamboyant chief of a $7 billion (£4.3 billion) hedge fund has provided a glimpse into a secretive world of male-dominated corporate networking that allegedly proved...

Charges against 14 snared in insider-trading probe make for unusually entertaining reading. The insider-trading case outlined by federal prosecutors in New York Thursday has all the elements of a classic television crime drama: wiretaps, clandestine cash handoffs and people with nicknames like "the Greek" and "octopussy." Authorities say a trader known as "the octopussy" is at the center of the ring, which included other traders, a Moody's Investors Service analyst, and hedge fund managers, and two lawyers, one of whom was a young associate who allegedly passed along tips about private-equity deals being done by his big law firm's clients....