The insider trading case against Raj Rajaratnam seemed very tight. The prosecutors had him on tape discussing the inside information from wiretaps.
So why did he fight his insider trading charges and get a lesser sentence than the 11 years that was handed down last week?
Suketu Mehta in the Daily Beast discussed the rational and irrational explanations.
A Sri Lankan diplomat close to Rajaratnam told me that she’d met him shortly before he was convicted. “He’d gone to the ola-leaf readers. They told him he’d be acquitted.”
Not tea leaves. Ola leaves.
Three thousand years ago, seven rishis (sages) in India set themselves a mission. They would write down the fate of as many people in the world as they could.
These forecasts are said to have been originally written on goatskins, later transcribed onto copper plaques and then onto ola leaves.
Maybe Rajaratnam’s inevitable appeal will mean the ola leaves were right.
Sources:
- Leaves of life in the Sunday Times
- The Outsider by Suketu Mehta in the Daily Beast