Who is Ramesh ‘Sunny’ Balwani?
RAMESH BALWANI was born in 1965 in Pakistan to a Sindhi Hindu family. The family moved to India, and later immigrated to the US.
In 1986, Balwani began undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin where he was a member of the Pakistani Students Association. He received an undergraduate degree in information systems.
After stints at Microsoft and Lotus, he helped build and sell an internet company and made $40 million (£29m) just before the bubble burst.
A freshly-minted millionaire, he married a Japanese artist and splashed out on cars, including a Porsche 911 and Lamborghini Gallardo and a mansion in Atherton, the wellheeled San Francisco satellite where Sir Nick Clegg now lives as he spins for Facebook, according to The Telegraph.
It was on a Stanford University trip to Beijing, China, that Balwani, then a 37-year-old computer science student met 18-year-old Holmes, who was due to join the Silicon Valley institution the following year.
She did, but eventually dropped out to start Theranos and begin her romance with Balwani. He moved Holmes
into his home after divorcing his wife, and in 2009, he was named as Theranos’ president.
Theranos claimed to have devised a revolutionary blood test that used very small amounts of blood. In 2015, Theranos came under criticism in the media due to its questionable claims and practices. The company was eventually forced into bankruptcy.
Balwani was charged by federal authorities for operating the business as a multimillion-dollar scheme to defraud investors and patients.
According to The Telegraph, Balwani’s lawyers will argue he cannot be accused of fraud because he has nothing to show for it. “He claims to have joined Theranos when it was on the brink of bankruptcy, investing $12m of his own money and paying himself just $1 salary and stock, which is now worthless,” it said.