Galleon prosecutors cite 'devastating' evidence

Federal prosecutors cited "devastating" evidence Wednesday against hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam at the close of the biggest Wall Street insider trading trial for a generation.

In the government's closing statement against Sri Lankan-born Rajaratnam, Assistant US Attorney Reed Brodsky said secret tape recordings of phone conversations involving the Galleon fund founder amounted to "devastating evidence of the defendant's crimes in real time."

His voice rising, Brodsky said Rajaratnam, 53, "committed the crime of insider trading repeatedly" as he strived to conquer New York's dizzyingly lucrative, high-stakes hedge fund market.

In his closing statement, defence attorney John Dowd retorted that the government was distorting facts, coercing witnesses and creating an "imaginary" picture. "You've been badly misled today," Dowd told the jury.

According to Dowd, Rajaratnam did not profit from illegal insider tips on stock movements, but rather used aggressive research to get legitimate, public information from media reports, analysts and trader chatter.

"The government case rests on a fictionalized idea that information can't ever become public until a company issues a press release. In the real world, billions of people are talking," Dowd said.

The seven-week trial is the centrepiece in the most significant insider trading prosecution in years on Wall Street.

But it is also the biggest trial to target Wall Street practices since the 2008 stock market collapse and is seen, in part, as an attempt by the government to satisfy public demand for financiers to be brought to heel.

AFP