Ahuja’s attorney Roberto Finzi said Ahuja only wanted his clients to make money.
“Nothing in this record suggests that Mr. Ahuja took any comfort, joy or pleasure in what happened,” Finzi said. Lawyers for Ahuja and Shor had argued that the firm’s valuations were within appropriate ranges for assets that are mostly illiquid and difficult to price, and that its methods were known to employees throughout the firm and to investors.
Ahuja headed mortgage structuring at Lehman Brothers, was responsible for several trading desks at RBS Greenwich Capital and led global residential mortgage bond trading at Deutsche Bank AG for four years before leaving to found Premium Point in 2008.
The firm initially focused on the U.S. residential loan market and began amassing subprime mortgage bonds made up of distressed assets after the global credit crisis by monitoring borrower behavior. It later expanded into the jumbo loan and home rental businesses and managed about $2 billion of assets at its peak.
Premium Point began winding down in late 2016 after posting large losses and revealed the following year that federal securities regulators were examining the way it valued its assets. Its mortgage credit funds filed for bankruptcy protection in March 2018, and Ahuja, Majidi and Shor were charged two months later. Former chief risk officer Ashish Dole also pleaded guilty and testified for the prosecution at the trial.
Prosecutors said the goal of the scheme was to make the firm’s performance seem better than it was and to charge its clients -- including a hedge fund founded by former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci that lost more than $51 million in the plot -- higher fees and keep them from withdrawing their investments.
This article was provided by Bloomberg News.