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Hedge fund tycoon Raj Rajaratnam has been ordered to serve 11 years in prison for his role in a Wall Street insider trading scandal. The sentence is one of the longest ever handed down for an insider-trading case.
Raj Rajaratnam, a self-made hedge fund tycoon, has been ordered on Thursday to serve 11 years in prison. He's convicted in the biggest Wall Street trading scandal in a generation.
This is one of the longest sentences ever in an insider-trading case but far less than prosecutors sought.
The sentencing caps a prosecution, marked by secret wiretaps of Rajaratnam and his associates, that shocked the investment world.
Rajaratnam once ran a $7 billion hedge fund, but was found guilty of running a network of informants who provided him with corporate secrets.
The sentence was lighter than the nineteen and a half year minimum prison term that prosecutors had sought, but is still above the 10 years handed down recently in another major insider trading case.
U.S. District Judge Richard Holwell said the 54-year-old Rajaratnam suffers from "advanced diabetes," which he said may lead to kidney failure and a possible kidney transplant.
Holwell says he took these factors into account in his sentencing decision. The judge also fined him $10 million and ordered him to forfeit $53.8 million (USD).
Rajaratnam was convicted of 14 securities fraud and conspiracy charges in May after a two-month trial.
Prosecutors had made Rajaratnam the central figure of a sprawling criminal case that touched some of America's top companies, including Goldman Sachs, Intel, IBM and the elite McKinsey & Co consultancy.