"It's not like he didn't respond or sounded bad." He didn't mention the case.Ĭoverage of Valvani's death, Malhotra believes, was colored by the assumption that it was confirmation of his guilt. "It was so emphatic."Ī few days before Valvani died, she sent him a text - a silly Bollywood song. "I could read how sure he was," she recalled. He told her he didn't think he had done anything wrong.
#Starmoney business 6 professional#
"I've known him since 2010, and after a while you can read somebody," said Shibani Malhotra, a friend and professional contact.Ī few weeks before the government announced the indictment, Malhotra met Valvani for coffee. But his death has forced people who knew him to contend with a narrative of his life that they hadn't previously considered. That last part, his friends say, was the kind of thing that defined Valvani's character. Partly out of loyalty to Gottlieb, who had made Valvani's career, he may have felt like he couldn't leave Visium, even though he was notably underpaid and likely would have succeeded on his own, colleagues said.Īnd later, like many accused of white-collar crimes, he was being professionally isolated and he worried about the impact that the charges would have on employees of Visium if the fund would have to shut down as a result. His relationship with Jacob Gottlieb, Visium's founder who once was a mentor to Valvani, had shifted. Valvani's wife, through Valvani's attorney, declined to speak with us, and his father - in a brief conversation - said he couldn't bring himself to speak about the situation.īut the people who did speak revealed that Valvani was under pressure on several fronts. Most of his friends and colleagues asked not to be named in this story because of professional relationships or, in one case, out of deference to his family.
"Everybody was mostly just hurt that he didn't get to defend himself." I don't believe he did anything wrong," the colleague said. "He was too smart to not have thought through all of this. The colleague and another friend describe Valvani as levelheaded and said he didn't drink alcohol. There were times when he lost millions of dollars but wouldn't flinch, the person said. He was meticulous and thought through every action, according to one colleague. So, friends and colleagues who spoke with Business Insider say Valvani's death came as a shock.
(Preet Bharara, the US attorney for the Southern District of New York, did not hold a press conference to announce the charges against Valvani as he has in other white-collar cases.Thomson Reuters) Attorney for the Southern District of New York, speaks during a news conference on Las Vegas sports bettor William Valvani's lawyer, Barry Berke, is considered top notch and just last year had gotten insider-trading charges dropped for SAC Advisors' Michael Steinberg. Several of the people who knew him said they thought the government's charges were weak, especially since the standard by which prosecutors need to prove insider trading is in flux. The note is not in court records relating to his case. Valvani, who had pleaded not guilty in court, repeated his claim of innocence in the note he left behind, according to two people who said they had seen it. Why does a man who thinks he is innocent do this? and found Valvani's body facedown in a bedroom, a note and a weapon nearby. On Sunday - June 19 - Valvani, 44, celebrated Father's Day with his family, including his two daughters.
#Starmoney business 6 trial#
Valvani was advised that the negative press coverage would blow over in about a week and that an eventual trial would be his chance to defend himself publicly.īut he didn't make it through. News photographers snapped pictures of him as he left the courthouse in downtown Manhattan - all fairly standard for a white-collar case. The news media - including Business Insider - jumped all over the story, reporting on the indictment against Valvani and his apparent conspiracy with a former senior Food and Drug Administration official.
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