Tape OK'd as Gupta Trial Looms

Next week, Rajat Gupta, former CEO of McKinsey & Co. and board member at Goldman Sachs, goes on trial, charged with leaking information about Goldman to stock trader Raj Rajaratnam .

Jed Rakoff, the federal judge presiding in the case, ruled that prosecutors may use a wiretap recording of Gupta talking to Rajaratnam in their opening arguments, the Associated Press reports.

Meanwhile, defense attorneys sought to introduce evidence that Gupta is charitable rather than greedy, arguing that the prosecution would argue that greed helped motivate him, the WSJ Law Blog reports. But the prosecutors said they would make no such argument. The judge said Gupta's team might only be allowed to present evidence of his charitable work if the defendant himself testified. (Morally speaking, of course, charity is not the standard of virtue. And logically speaking, that a person wishes to give money away doesn't mean he won't obtain that money improperly.)

I have previously defended (mostly) the morality of insider trading and argued that we should care about Gupta's case despite Goldman's receipt of a government bailout.

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