Business

Rajaratnam had VIP list, Gupta witness says

It’s the one VIP list you wouldn’t want to be on these days.

Jailed hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam kept a VIP list of people, including ex-Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta, who were allowed to interrupt him at any time, Rajaratnam’s former assistant testified today.

The assistant, Carlyn Eisenberg, told a Manhattan federal court jury that Gupta, who is on trial for insider-trading charges, was among the few names on the list.

Hedge-fund honcho Stan Druckenmiller and Danielle Chiesi, the teen beauty queen turned trader who pleaded guilty in the case against Rajaratnam, also appear on the list.

Gupta, a former McKinsey & Co. head, is accused of tipping Galleon Group founder Rajaratnam to confidential information he gained as a director for Goldman and Procter & Gamble.

Eisenberg testified that a man whose voice she recognized as being on the list caused a flurry of activity when he dialed Rajaratnam’s office late one day in September 2008.

The call, which phone records later showed came from Gupta’s McKinsey office, arrived roughly 10 minutes before the close of markets on Sept. 23, according to Eisenberg.

The caller “said it was urgent and he needed to speak to Raj,” she told the jurors.

After Rajaratnam took the call, he immediately called one of his traders, Gary Rosenbach, into his office. Rosenbach, who helped Eisenberg get the job at Galleon, quickly emerged and Eisenberg said she heard him say “buy Goldman Sachs” on the phone.

Later that day, Goldman announced its board had just approved a $5 billion investment from billionaire investor Warren Buffett during the depths of the financial crisis. Gupta was on the call when the board approved the Buffett deal.

Eisenberg didn’t identify the caller as Gupta and said she wouldn’t recognize his voice if she heard it today. But she said she recognized the voice at the time and knew the caller was on the approved list.

The defense countered that Rajaratnam had plenty of contacts at Goldman, including a salesman that Eisenberg admitted was added to the VIP list at a later date.

The defense also sought to prove its theory that there was more than one possible leaker, with an e-mail showing Rajaratnam went on a posh trip to Atlantic City in 2008 that included Goldman Sachs execs Gary Cohn and Dave Hully.

The trip also included Druckenmiller and fellow hedge-fund manager Paul Tudor Jones.

The group, minus Jones, planned to fly by helicopter from the West 30th heliport, to AC, where they had a private room waiting for them with dinner and drinks at the Borgata.

Jones would be making his own travel arrangements, according to the e-mail.