After Rajat Gupta's light sentence, Rajaratnam wants own jail term axed

Rajaratnam's appeal against his conviction comes a day after a federal judge sentenced his friend and business associate Indian-American Rajat Gupta to two years imprisonment for leaking boardroom secrets to him.

The Sri Lankan is currently serving an 11 year prison term after being convicted last year of running one of the biggest insider trading scams in US history.

A ruling on Rajaratnam's appeal is expected in the next few months.

His lawyer Patricia Millett told a panel of federal appeals court judges here yesterday that the government violated his constitutional right to privacy and federal law on wiretaps by providing incomplete information to authorising judge Gerard Lynch in seeking permission to wiretap his phones.

Rajaratnam's lawyers said the government made a "long pattern of falsities, misleading misrepresentations and material omissions" to Lynch, a district court judge in 2008, when it sought authorisation to wiretap his mobile phone.

Millett said the law requires that federal authorities should first exhaust all other conventional investigative procedures, like interviewing witnesses and reviewing documents, before seeking authorization to secretly record telephone conversations.

The government has to prove that it tried all other options to collect information against a defendant but failed before it is allowed the use of wiretaps.

Millett said the government had failed to disclose to Lynch that

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