One day after former Goldman Sachs executive Rajat K. Gupta was sentenced to two years in prison for insider trading, a lawyer for the now-defunct Galleon Group's founder Raj Rajaratnam asked that his conviction for the same crime be set aside, The New York Times reported.
Rajaratnam was convicted in May 2011 and is currently serving an 11-year sentence in Massachusetts.
Patricia A. Millet argued that the government used "deceptive methods" to obtain permission to wiretap Rajaratnam's telephone, to a panel of United States Court of Appeals judges for the Second Circuit in Manhattan on Thursday, according to The Times.
Millet said the application made by the government for the wiretap permission was "riddled with problems" resulting in a violation of Rajaratnam's constitutional right to privacy and also violating federal law governing wiretaps. "You have cascading errors, paragraph after paragraph," she claimed.
In particular, Millet said the government failed to disclose that the SEC had been conducting a civil investigation of Rajaratnam for one-and-a-half years when applying for the wiretap permission.
If Millet is successful in her appeal, according to The Times, the government would be forced to retry Rajaratnam, "without its most powerful evidence: dozens of incriminating phone calls in which he and his informants brazenly swapped confidential information about publicly traded companies."
Rajaratnam founded the Galleon Group, once the world's largest hedge fund. He was fined $10 million in addition to his prison sentence after being convicted on14 counts of fraud and conspiracy. The Times called his sentencing -- the longest prison sentence ever for insider trading -- a "watershed moment."
A ruling on the appeal is expected in the coming months, The Times reported.
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