Anita Raghavan: Galleon Group Scandal No Stain on Indian Americans

NEW YORK, June 6, 2013 — An Indian American luminary who had reached the highest echelons of corporate America would lose it all. "Rajat Gupta in his career wanted to have what Raj Rajaratnam had, and it was the billions," noted author Anita Raghavan, whose new book The Billionaire's Apprentice: The Rise of the Indian-American Elite and the Fall of the Galleon Hedge Fund, explores the real character and motivations of the central protagonist in the Galleon Group insider trading scandal, Rajat Gupta, as well as the conflicting accounts of the Rajaratnam-Gupta affair.

In a discussion led by Naazneed Karmali, India editor of Forbes Asia, Raghavan confronted the struggle of navigating this tale because of her own identity as an Indian American, and the mark the scandal left on the South Asian diaspora. When she began writing the book, a prominent Indian American in the banking industry approached her and asked, "Anita, why this book?" As she explained to the audience here, "You can tell that on some level his own sense of security felt threatened by this episode even though he had nothing to do with it."

Raghavan emphasized that this story is a stepping-stone for a rich, vibrant and diverse community. "We as a community have arrived in America. We are finally large enough in number, we are economically significant, and as a result we now have our own crime that will be prosecuted. There will be episodes like this from time to time. If anything, to me it's a celebration of the community's strength rather than its weakness."

Video: Watch program highlights (3 min., 22 sec.)