U.S. federal prosecutors plan to call Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS) to testify in the insider-trading trial of Galleon Group hedge-fund manager Raj Rajaratnam, MarketWatch and other news outlets report. In a letter to U.S. District Judge Richard J. Holwell, prosecutors said they intend to call Blankfein to testify regarding Rajat K. Gupta, a former Goldman director who the Securities and Exchange Commission has accused of passing confidential information to Rajaratnam. The prosecutors said they want Blankfein to testify on “Gupta’s service on the Goldman Sachs Board of Directors, the duties of confidentiality that Gupta owed to Goldman Sachs, and certain confidential information that Gupta obtained through his service on Goldman’s board in 2008.” The prosecutors sought to limit the defense from questioning Blankfein over Goldman’s role in the financial crisis or any pending investigations of Goldman. Such questions would be irrelevant because “this office has not notified Mr. Blankfein or Goldman Sachs that either is a target (or, for that matter, a subject) of any pending criminal investigation,” they wrote, according to the news reports.
