Raj Rajaratnam?s lawyer concluded his defence with the argument that Rajaratnam took advantage only of publicly available information.

All of the inside information that Rajaratnam, the co-founder of the Galleon Group hedge fund, is accused of trading on, said his lawyer, John Dowd, was already public in the form of news articles and research reports speculating about deals and events.

?He took advantage of public information available to the whole world, and that?s why you must acquit,? Dowd told jurors. The defence?s assertion stands in stark contrast with the insider trading case that federal prosecutors have endeavoured to build over the last two months, using trading records, cooperating witnesses and most important, secretly recorded phone calls.

Dowd finished his closing statement on Thursday, and the case is expected to go to the jury in Federal District Court on Monday. Rajaratnam, who is accused of pocketing more than $50 million in illicit profits, faces up to 25 years in prison if convicted.

During the government rebuttal on Thursday, jurors were asked to imagine themselves as the average investor, with the flurry of information that surfaces every day on the Web and in their e-mail boxes.

?Now imagine that you have all that plus you have an insider at a bunch of companies,? Jonathan Streeter, the prosecutor, told them. ?Which do you think has a huge advantage? That dispute between what constitutes insider information versus rumour and speculation remained the focus in the final days of the trial. Both sides are trying to sway jurors about the importance of knowing details of things like mergers and earnings before companies make their announcements.

Dowd spent time on Thursday disparaging the government?s cooperating witnesses, who pleaded guilty and testified about the details of the scheme.

Rajiv Goel, a former Intel executive who took the stand to tell jurors of tips he secreted to Rajaratnam, was ?belligerent, hostile, uncooperative and downright bizarre,? Dowd said. At times, Dowd seemed to take their cooperation personally, calling the arrangement one had with the government a ?sweetheart deal? to avoid prison time for lying about Rajaratnam. And just as the government used recordings and transcripts of conversations to bolster their argument to jurors, so, too, did Dowd. Though he played just one recorded call, Dowd relied heavily on transcripts from the trial to highlight what he considered inconsistencies in testimony from government witnesses.

?Thank God for cross-examination,? said Dowd, who said that several of the cooperators had cracked when subjected to questioning. Dowd spoke in a gravelly monotone with few gestures, his glasses perched atop his nose. Unlike Reed Brodsky, the prosecutor, who shouted and roamed before the jurors with an intense energy during his summation on Wednesday, Dowd had an avuncular manner and remained behind his lectern, reading notes from a binder.

Dowd tried to cast doubt on the government?s interpretation of a secretly recorded conversation in September 2008 during which Rajaratnam told his trader that he had purchased Goldman stock because ?I got a call saying something good is going to happen to Goldman.