Updated: 02/26/2013 08:35 | By Agence France-Presse

Gupta ordered to pay Goldman $6.2 million

Former Goldman Sachs board member Rajat Gupta was ordered Monday to pay $6.2 million for legal fees incurred by his former employer during his trial, in which he was convicted for insider trading.

Gupta, one of the most senior US businessmen convicted for white collar cheating, was told to foot the bank's legal bills by federal Judge Jed Rakoff in New York.

"This Court has no difficulty in concluding, by a preponderance of evidence, that nearly all of the expenses Goldman Sachs here claims were the necessary, direct, and foreseeable result of the investigation and prosecution of Gupta's offense of conviction," Rakoff wrote in his decision.

Gupta is free on bail while appealing his two-year prison sentence.

He was convicted last June of spilling boardroom secrets to his friend Raj Rajaratnam, the former Galleon hedge fund tycoon who was earlier sentenced to 11 years in prison for insider trading.

In addition to his spot on the Goldman Sachs board, Gupta had been head of the renowned consultancy McKinsey & Co, and a director of Procter & Gamble, making him one of the most successful Indian immigrants in the United States.