New York - Hector Ruiz, former head of the computer chips maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD,) Monday has taken a leave of absence as board chairman of the parent company GlobalFoundries after being named as a key figure in an ongoing investigation into a 20- million-dollar insider trading scandal. In its announcement, GlobalFoundries said Ruiz, 63, had already resigned in September effective in January, but has now taken a voluntary leave of absence. A replacement,Alan Ross, was named.
The company did not mention a reason for the absence.
Ruiz was named last week by the Wall Street Journal as a key figure in the ongoing investigation of the scandal arround Raj Rajaratnam, co-founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund.
According to the paper, Ruiz, 63, who was AMD chairman at the time of the alleged insider trading and later became chief executive of the firm, was the person named in court papers who provided sensitive data to Rajaratnam about a 2008 reorganization of AMD.
That information was subsequently used in the alleged trading scandal in which Rajaratnam and five others face federal criminal and civil charges.
Ruiz himself has not been accused in the investigations.
Court papers say an AMD executive - identified as Ruiz by the Journal - provided the information about plans to spin off AMD's manufacturing operations to a joint venture with investors from Abu Dhabi. Ruiz was chairman of that new company, Globalfoundries Inc.
Under US law, corporations whose shares are publicly traded must hew to certain transparency rules. Traders are not to have access to financial information before the company releases it to the public.
Rajaratnam's Galleon Group is one of the world's largest hedge funds, with branches in London, Singapore, Mumbai and Menlo Park, California.
Last week, Rajaratnam announced plans to liquidate his hedge funds. He is currently free on 100-million-dollar bail. Sri Lankan authorities are also investigating whether Rajaratnam financed prominent front organizations for Tamil rebels in that country.
The 52-year-old investor was identified this year by Forbes as the 559th richest person in the world, with a net worth of 1.3 billion dollars, Bloomberg financial news service reported.
