Intel Exec Involved In Trading Scandal Quits Job

Jeffrey Burt,

Rajiv Goel, the Intel executive charged with giving inside information regarding Intel and Clearwire to a hedge fund manager, has left the chip maker

Rajiv Goel, the executive with Intel’s treasury unit who was charged in connection with a massive Wall Street insider trading scheme that also allegedly involved a high-ranking IBM official, reportedly is no longer with the company.

Goel, who was placed on administrative leave after his arrest, left Intel shortly before the start of 2010, according to an Intel spokesperson.

Goel was arrested in October as part of a federal investigation into a massive hedge fund insider trading scheme that generated more than $20 billion (£12.6bn) in illegal profits. He was one of several tech executives accused in the case. Others included Robert Moffat, a former senior vice president and group executive of IBM’s Systems and Technology Group who was considered by some to be a possible successor of CEO Sam Palmisano.

Moffat has since left IBM.

Hector Ruiz, onetime CEO of chip maker Advanced Micro Devices and until 2 November the chairman of AMD spinoff Globalfoundries, was not charged in the case, but reportedly was a key source of inside information given to hedge fund manager Danielle Chiesi of New Castle Funds.

According to investigators, Goel gave nonpublic information regarding Clearwire – a wireless company in which Intel had invested – to Raj Rajaratnam, founder and managing partner of hedge fund Galleon Management, who then traded on that information. Goel also allegedly gave Rajaratnam information regarding Intel earnings.

In return, investigators said, Rajaratnam made favorable trades for Goel.

Rajaratnam and Chiesi are central figures in the case and have been indicted.

According to court documents, Moffat gave Chiesi insider information about several companies, including AMD, IBM and Sun Microsystems.

Ruiz is not named in the court papers outlining the charges against Chiesi. However, Department of Justice lawyers refer to an unnamed AMD executive who gave Chiesi information regarding AMD’s joint venture with Abu Dhabi’s ATIC (Advanced Technology Investment Corp.) to spin off AMD’s chip manufacturing business, creating Globalfoundries.

The Wall Street Journal and other publications, relying on unnamed sources, have reported that the unnamed AMD executive was Ruiz.