Forbes’ Walter Pavlo (May 23, 2012) noted that there were many other people at Goldman who socialized with Rajaratnam and could have been tipping him:

“Eisenberg testified that Gupta was on Raj’s list of names of “important” people that had immediate access to the Galleon co-founder and it was given to her by her predecessor.  Being on that list meant that Raj was to be told immediately and the list includes the names of Rajiv Goel, Anil Kumar and Danielle Chiesi …. all of whom have pled guilty to charges related to insider trading.  This strategy is meant to portray Gupta as being in some ring of co-conspirators when in fact this may not be the case.  Also on the list was Parag Saxena and Stanley Druckenmiller, neither are accused of any crime.  Druckenmiller was one of the top people of billionaire George Soros and headed his own hedge fund, Duquesne Capital Management (closed in 2010).  Saxena is a founding partner and CEO of New Silk Route Partners and, like Raj, graduated from the Wharton School (U Penn).

While Gupta was on Raj’s short list, I am certain he was also on other short lists.  I am confident that executive assistants at a number of firms were told to escalate a call from Rajat Gupta.  Lloyd Blankfein, CEO of Goldman might put someone like Gupta on his “short list” since Gupta was on the firms’ Board of Directors.  Billionaire Bill Gates may have Gupta on his list since he was on the board of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.  But being on those lists do not help the government’s case.

Then there was that phone call Eisenberg testified about, the one from “Gupta’s phone number” that was placed to Rajaratnam moments before the close of trading on September 23, 2008, the day of the announcement of Berkshire Hathaway’s $5 billion investment into Goldman Sachs.   “Raj closed the door,” she testified, after she passed the call to Rajaratnam.  Then what?  Look, it doesn’t look good, but it is not supposed to look good …. but there are two different views of the same event.  There is no tape of that conversation, nor is there anyone that is going to testify about what they heard on that phone call…but there was testimony from a Galleon trader, Ananth Muniyappa, that said he was instructed to purchase 267,000 shares of Goldman stock after that phone call … a phone call which ended, according to Eisenberg, with a big smile from Raj.

Raj knew other people at Goldman Sachs beside Gupta, and this would also cast doubt as to who, if anyone, was providing inside information to Raj on Goldman. Goldman’s president, Gary Cohn, was known to socialize occasionally with Raj….so was David Loeb, head of of Goldman’s Asia equity sales…so was David Heller, co-head of Goldman’s security division … so was Michael Daffey, another Goldman executive.  Those guys have not been accused anything illegal, but oh the trouble that a well-timed call and a smile can get one into these days on Wall Street.”