Former AMD CEO Hector Ruiz Named in Insider Trading Scandal, WSJ Reports

Galleon Group is the Wall Street hedge fund that recently had one of its key members, Raj Rajaratnam, arrested by the Department of Justice after years of wiretaps revealed that he, hedge fund manager Danielle Chiesi of New Castle Partners and five other financial and technology executives—including IBM Senior Vice President Robert Moffatt—had been engaging in insider trading, according to the DOJ.

The insider trading allegedly went on for several years, but wiretaps set up by the government reportedly captured much of it.

Court documents gave an unnamed source as the tipster supplying inside information from Advanced Micro Devices, but the Wall Street Journal reports that a source says it was former AMD CEO Hector Ruiz, who now works for AMD spinoff Globalfoundries. Other names that have not been revealed to date include a tipster working at Google's investor relations and an executive at Akamai, according to an investigation of court documents by the New York Times.  

The Wall Street Journal wrote:

"Mr. Ruiz, who isn't a defendant, didn't return calls seeking comment. A lawyer for Danielle Chiesi, a defendant in the case and the person to whom the person said Mr. Ruiz allegedly passed the information, declined to comment. The involvement of Mr. Ruiz, 63 years old, adds the biggest name yet to the case, in which Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of the hedge-fund firm Galleon Group, and five others including Ms. Chiesi face federal criminal and civil charges. All have said they are innocent. Galleon said Tuesday it has nearly completed liquidating its funds.

Resource Library:

"A complaint filed in a New York federal court this month alleged that the AMD executive now identified as Mr. Ruiz shared confidential information with Ms. Chiesi about a 2008 reorganization of AMD. The deal spun off AMD's manufacturing operations to a joint venture bankrolled by investors from Abu Dhabi. Mr. Ruiz became chairman of the new company, Globalfoundries Inc., and continues in that role.

"Globalfoundries declined to comment."

For some involved, the motivation was the giving of information in exchange for a job. For others, money was the goal, said legal documents filed by the U.S. Attorney's office.