Judge tells Gupta: You’re going nowhere

Former Goldman Sachs director Rajat Gupta lost his bid to have his insidertrading conviction tossed after a judge ruled it was “too little, too late.”

Gupta was convicted in 2012 of passing illegal tips about Goldman Sachs to Galleon Group founder Raj Rajaratnam while Gupta was on the Goldman board.

He asked to have his conviction overturned after an appeals court threw out two insidertrading convictions because the government had not proved that the people who gave the tips had received a financial benefit.

Gupta is serving a twoyear sentence at a prison in Massachusetts and is reportedly scheduled for a March 2016 release.

Manhattan federal Judge Jed Rakoff denied Gupta’s motion on Thursday, saying the appeals court decision did not affect tippers like him.

Gupta and Rajaratnam “were close business associates with a considerable history of exchanging financial favors,” Rakoff noted.

In 2008, Gupta had been named chairman of Galleon International, Rajaratnam’s $1.1 billion hedgefund firm, in which he had a 15 percent stake.

While a Goldman director, Gupta told Rajaratnam that Warren Buffett planned to invest $5 million in the bank during the depths of the financial crisis, then later leaked information that Goldman would post a fourthquarter loss.

That information provided a “potential pecuniary benefit” to Gupta because of his investments in Galleon, Rakoff said.

Rajaratnam has also asked the court to throw out his conviction based on the same appeals court decision.