Rengan Rajaratnam Settlement Exposes Slightly Weak Point in SEC’s Newish Admissions Policy

You remember Rengan Rajaratnam, right?  He broke the S.D.N.Y.’s long streak of insider trading victories when a jury acquitted him in July.  I wondered what the effect on his case with the SEC would be.  Would he settle?  Would he take that one to trial and win, too?

Well, he and the SEC came to a settlement last Thursday, and here they are: Rajaratnam will pay disgorgement of $372,000, prejudgment interest of $96,000, and a civil penalty of $372,000.  He also agreed to be barred from the securities industry with the right to apply for reentry after five years. So, pretty standard terms. And at first I read them as a substantial SEC victory.  That is, regardless of the acquittal in Rajaratnam’s criminal case, the SEC appeared to have dictated the terms and exacted what it normally does when settling an insider trading case before trial, as most are done.

Anyway, I thought that until I read this quote from Rajaratnam’s lawyer, Daniel Gitner: “The S.E.C. elected to offer, and Rengan elected to accept, a no admit/no deny settlement. Rengan is moving on to the next phase of his life. If the S.E.C. has further comment, so will we.” Gitner was right to make this point publicly, and it means a bit more than it would have two years ago. Since the Commission changed its policy for settled cases last year to compel admissions of liability in some of them, a case without one is a small victory, however modest, for a settling defendant. Rajaratnam may be paying a lot of money, and he’s agreeing to step out of the securities industry for at least five years. But even with all the resources of two government agencies being thrown at him, they’re not making him admit he did anything wrong. It's not a huge win. Rajaratnam probably isn't crowing about it at home. But it's slightly more than he would have had if the SEC had kept its policy to have all settlements be uniform on that point.