Raj Rajaratnam, former US hedge fund manager, gets 11 years for insider trading

Oct 13, 2011 |

Reuters

New York

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Raj Rajaratnam

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Raj Rajaratnam, a self-made hedge fund tycoon convicted in the biggest Wall Street trading scandal in a generation, was ordered on Thursday to serve 11 years in prison, one of the longest sentences on record in an insider-trading case but less than prosecutors had sought.

Prosecutors had asked U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell in Manhattan to impose a sentence of at least 19-1/2 years on the Galleon Group founder, the central figure in a sweeping criminal case that touched some of America's top companies, including Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Intel Corp, IBM and the elite McKinsey & Co consultancy.

Defense lawyers had argued that Rajaratnam deserved a much shorter prison term, citing unspecified health problems and arguing that the government was pushing for a punishment more appropriate to a violent criminal.

Prosecutors have called Rajaratnam, 54, the 'modern face' of insider trading, putting him in a dubious pantheon of Wall Street power players such as takeover specialist Ivan Boesky and junk bond financier Michael Milken, principal figures in a mid-1980s insider-trading case. Both men served about two years in prison.

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