Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta has assumed the role of a US-based non-profit organisations’ chairman. Gupta had spent the last two years in jail on charges of insider trading.
Gupta has taken over as chairman of WHEELS Global Foundation (WGF). Launched in 2013 by IIT alumni, WGF is a non-profit organisation focussed on applying technology to uplift rural communities and provide technological solutions to global challenges in six areas: water, health, education, energy, lifestyles and sustainability.
Gupta’s name appears under the list of WGF’s Board of Directors with the title of Chairman on WGF’s web page, reports PTI. According to his profile on the WGF website, he ‘serves on its board as a key strategist in defining direction and focus of the non-profit organisation.’ It said Gupta brings his ‘considerable skills to WGF, along with his leadership associations and advisory roles to many other non-profits such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.’
His profile further adds that the IIT-Delhi and Harvard Business School alumnus and former McKinsey head is a ‘leading Indian-American businessman and philanthropist’ and is ‘widely regarded as one of the first Indians to successfully break through the glass ceiling, as the first Indian-born CEO of a multinational corporation (not just a consultancy).’
In the US’ crackdown on insider trading, Gupta was one of the highest-profile convict, sentenced to two years in prison. He served his term in a federal prison in Ayer, Massachusetts and walked a free man in March this year.
Prosecutors had accused Gupta of passing confidential boardroom information about Goldman Sachs to now jailed hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam. Gupta is still fighting in an appeals court to have his insider-trading conviction thrown out.
