The jury has been selected and the trial centering on New York billionaire Raj Rajaratnam is ready to roll.
The jury of 18 — including 6 alternates — consists of 10 women and 8 men and includes a graphic designer and an instructor for the visually impaired.
Witnesses are expected to be called starting next week and may include executives from The Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs and consulting firm McKinsey & Co. The prosecution has said its first witnesses will be an FBI agent and Anil Kumar, a McKinsey executive who pleaded guilty and says Rajaratnam paid him to provide confidential information about his company’s clients.
Rajaratnam has been charged by a grand jury with pocketing $45 million by trading in stocks based on illegal insider information.
The 53-year old hedge-fund billionaire, who has pleaded not guilty, is fighting the charges on the premise that information gathering is part of his job and did not cross the line into illegal trading.