Rengan Rajaratnam has sought a US court to dismiss the insider trading charges filed against him in 2013, Reuters reported. He is the younger brother of Raj Rajaratnam, the hedge fund manager and founder of Galleon Group who got an 11-year prison term after a jury convicted him in October 2011 of charges related to insider trading, the report said.
The younger Rajaratnam's lawyers filed the motion in the US District Court in New York, arguing that the positions taken by the government in the indictment disagreed with the ones the prosecutor took when it tried the older Rajaratnam for insider trading. The defense lawyers said in the filing, "Principles of fairness dictate that Rengan, at a minimum, should be tried under the same standard as Raj."
The lawsuit is just one of the insider trading prosecutions carried out by the office of US Attorney Preet Bharara. Since October 2009, Bharara's efforts have led to 79 convictions to date, the report said.
A former portfolio manager at Galleon Group, Rengan Rajaratnam was indicted by a grand jury in March last year of seven counts of conspiracy and securities fraud. According to the indictment, the younger Rajaratnam worked together with his older brother to trade using non-public information involving two companies in 2008. The trade related to Advanced Micro Devices Inc and Clearwire Corp resulted to nearly $1.2 million in profits, the report said.
The lawyers maintained in the filing that the indictment failed to allege that Rajaratnam had knowledge that the two alleged tippers who divulged the inside information were given a personal benefit for the tips they gave to Raj Rajaratnam, the report said.
The tippers were Intel Corp employee Rajiv Goel who said he passed a tip to the Galleon founder that Intel had intentions of investing in Clearwire, and former McKinsey Director Anil Kumar who admitted tipping Rajaratnam regarding AMD, the report said.
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