United States v. Gupta, No. 12-4448-cr (2d Cir. Mar. 25, 2014) (Newman, Kearse, and Pooler), available here
Rajat K. Gupta, a former director of The Goldman Sachs Group, was convicted, after a jury trial, of three counts of securities fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud, based on insider trading. He was sentenced to 24 months of imprisonment, one year of supervised release, and a fine of $5 million. This published decision affirms the judgment.
Gupta argued on appeal that the trial court (Judge Rakoff) erred (1) by admitting statements of a coconspirator (Raj Rajaratnam), recorded in wiretapped telephone conversations to which Gupta was not a party, and (2) by excluding relevant evidence offered by Gupta.
The Circuit rejected these arguments. It held, first, that Rules 801 and 804 of the Federal Rules of Evidence allowed the admission of Rajaratnam’s recorded statements, both as non-hearsay statements in furtherance of the charged “Rajaratnam-Gupta conspiracy” and under …