The change of SAC’s e-mail policy in the fall of 2008 was voluntary. Before 2012, preserving such communications was optional for hedge funds not registered with the SEC as investment advisers. As of March 2012, all hedge funds had to register as investment advisers and were required to adopt record-retention policies.
Jonathan Gasthalter, a spokesman for SAC, declined to comment on why the policy change was voluntarily initiated. Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman for Bharara, declined to comment, as did SEC spokesman John Nester.
Martoma Evidence
Prosecutors have told the federal judge presiding over the Martoma case that they don’t plan to rely on recorded phone conversations as evidence against him.
If Cohen were charged, he would replace Rajaratnam as the most prominent hedge fund figure implicated in the government’s six-year probe into insider trading on Wall Street.
Rajaratnam, accused of being the mastermind of a network of insider traders, was convicted in 2011 and sentenced to 11 years in prison. Prosecutors claim he made more than $50 million in profits from the trades, one-fifth that claimed in the Martoma/CR Intrinsic case.
The criminal case is U.S. v. Martoma, 12-02985, and the civil case is SEC v. CR Intrinsic Investors LLC, 12-08466, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).