Jury deliberates Rajaratnam's fate in insider case (Reuters)

Monday, April 25, 2011 10:01 AM By dwi

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The fate of inclose fund originator Raj Rajaratnam was in the safekeeping of a commission on weekday in the large Wall Street insider trading effort in decades, a housing that featured FBI sound taps and past friends who testified against him.

Jurors began deliberations presently after midday in the intimately watched borough federal suite trial. The government's housing has relied hard on secretly transcribed telephone conversations, patch the accumulation argues that the Galleon Group founder's trades were guided by psychotherapy and open information.

Prosecutors accuse Rajaratnam of running a debased and Byzantine web of highly placed tipsters between 2003 and March 2009 to attain an illicit $63.8 meg on stocks such as chipmakers Advanced Micro Devices Inc, Intel Corp and cyberspace see engine Google Inc.

U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell, in his manual to jurors who hit heard heptad weeks of evidence, said that "whether you approve or disapprove" of the secret FBI recordings, they staleness be considered in deliberations.

The commission of 12 and four alternates does not know that Rajaratnam fought unsuccessfully terminal assemblage to hit the sound taps suppressed from the trial.

The determine reminded the commission to ingest ordinary significance in deliberations and that the polity had the charge of proof on apiece of the 14 counts -- fivesome counts of conspiracy and nine of securities fraud.

For a blameable verdict, the jurors staleness be unanimous.

'HAS TO BE TRUE'

Rajaratnam's Oct 2009 collar was conception of a comprehensive investigation that prosecutors hit described as the large probe of insider trading at inclose funds on record.

The tending given to the housing was reminiscent of the bounteous insider trading gossip of the mid-1980s involving speculator Ivan Boesky and fling bond solon archangel Milken.

In the broad Galleon case, 20 discover of the 26 executives, traders and lawyers live hit pleaded blameable to malefactor charges. Three of them agreed to declare at effort against Sri Lankan-born Rajaratnam.

To convict Rajaratnam, the government's grounds staleness persuade jurors beyond a reasonable doubt that he received touchable nonpublic aggregation from people who had a obligation not to divulge it, and that he knew it was wrong.

If convicted, Rajaratnam could be sentenced to up to 25 years in prison.

Rajaratnam's effort began on March 8. He is the only litigator to go to effort so far. A removed effort of four another defendants is scheduled to start on May 16.

Earlier on Monday, a prosecutor ended his closing argument in rebuttal to terminal week's accumulation summation.

Referring to accumulation arguments that those who testified against Rajaratnam did not tell the truth, supporter U.S. Attorney Jonathan Streeter told jurors that there was so such corroborating grounds that the effort evidence "has to be true."

Defense lawyers said Rajaratnam was a successful, battleful money trainer who used a panoramic array of research, psychotherapy and open aggregation to attain his trading decisions.

Rajaratnam's important lawyer, Evangelist Dowd, said in his closing evidence to the commission terminal week that there were binary instances where the inclose fund trainer "had taken a function before the transcribed conversation.

"We hit shown you another times when Raj didn't change at all, and when he traded in the opposite content of what was communicated on the calls," Dowd said.

He argued that the aggregation at supply was public, not secret, and Rajaratnam should be acquitted.

The housing is army v Raj Rajaratnam et al, U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, No. 09-01184.

(Reporting by Grant McCool and Jonathan Stempel, redaction by Gospels Lewis)


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