Not long ago, Raj Rajaratnam was counted among the several spectacular success stories that the subcontinent has produced over the last many years. But with his arrest this month on a $20-million insider trading scam, the 52-year-old hedge fund manager has scripted a rather bleak epitaph to an otherwise inspiring career graph. Galleon Group, the hedge fund he founded in 1997, managed a reported $3.7 billion in assets, at the time of the arrest.

The Sri Lanka-born Rajaratnam started his career in financial services as a lending officer at Chase Manhattan Bank.

At just 40, Rajaratnam bought the hedge fund he started at Needham & Co.

In 1985, he joined boutique investment bank Needham & Company as an analyst focused on the electronics industry. He quickly rose to become the Head of Research in 1987 and President in 1991. The following year, he was mandated to start hedge fund Needham Emerging Growth Partnership. Six years later, he bought the hedge fund, and renamed it Galleon. He was just 40 at the time. Early this year, the Wharton-educated billionaire’s net worth had been estimated at $1.8 billion, making him the 236th richest American.

Galleon, which had a strong bias towards technology and healthcare stocks, considers companies such as eBay, Google, Apple, Cisco, Wyeth and Intel among its top investments. The hedge fund has been a fairly active investor in India, with investments in companies such as Shriram EPC, Pipavav Shipyard, Edelweiss Capital, Reliance Infratel and Take Solutions. A few of these investments are co-investment deals with private equity firms.

His personal dealings have been as interesting as his professional ones. He is said to have been a big contributor to the Barack Obama presidential campaign. Some reports say that he has pledged $20 million in donations to rehabilitate LTTE combatants in his home country Sri Lanka.