Guardian.co.uk – My coverage of Raj Rajaratnam, the Wall Street hedge fund manager accused of orchestrating a sophisticated insider trading ring with tipsters at firms such as IBM and Intel, has prompted an email from an acquaintance of the accused who says the Sri Lankan-born billionaire is not the “ogre” he is being made out to be.

Vijay Dandapani, chief executive of a budget hospitality company in Manhattan called Apple Core Hotels, writes to say that he was invited by Rajaratnam on a cricket trip a few years back and has since seen him “off and on” in New York.

“I do know Raj, though not well, and find it hard to believe that he is the ogre he is being made out to be,” says Dandapani.

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Tags: chief-executive, hedge fund billionaire, hedge-fund-manager, insider trading, raj rajaratnam

WSJ – A group of victims of terror attacks by Sri Lanka’s Tamil Tigers rebels filed suit against Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon Group hedge-fund founder charged in an insider-trading case, accusing him of funding the Tigers’”crimes against humanity.”

The suit was filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in New Jersey by 30 people who say they are survivors of attacks carried out by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam during decades of civil war against the Sri Lankan government.

The lawsuit alleges that from 2000 to 2007, Mr. Rajaratnam and a family foundation led by Mr. Rajaratnam’s father gave more than $5 million to a U.S. charity, called the Tamil Rehabilitation Organization, that the U.S. government subsequently declared in 2007 to be a fund-raising front for the Tamil Tigers.

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Tags: galleon group hedge fund, insider trading, raj rajaratnam

Bloomberg – Raj Rajaratnam, the founder of Galleon Group, planned to gauge interest in a $200 million Sri Lanka fund with a trip to London before he was arrested, said two people with knowledge of the matter.

The Sri Lankan-born billionaire had planned to raise money for the fund by listing it on London’s Alternative Investment Market, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because the information is private. Dan Gagnier, a New York- based spokesman for Galleon, couldn’t be reached for comment after business hours.

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Tags: alternative-investment-market, galleon, raj rajaratnam