Rajat K. Gupta, the former Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble director, was sentenced to two years in prison on Wednesday for leaking boardroom secrets to the former hedge fund manager Raj Rajaratnam.
Mr. Gupta, 63, who ran the consulting firm McKinsey & Company and served as a top adviser to the foundations of Bill Gates and Bill Clinton, is the most prominent figure to face prison in the government's sweeping crackdown on insider trading.
He was also ordered to pay a $5 million fine.
The Justice Department's campaign has reached onto the trading floors of some of Wall Street's largest hedge funds and inside the most revered boardrooms of corporate America. Over a three-year stretch, more than 70 traders, bankers, lawyers and corporate executives have been convicted of insider trading crimes.
Judge Jed S. Rakoff of Federal District Court in Manhattan handed down a more lenient prison sentence than the 8 to 10 years stipulated by nonbinding federal sentencing guidelines.
An Indian from Kolkata and a graduate of Harvard Business School, Mr. Gupta rose swiftly through the ranks of McKinsey and headed the firm for a decade. He was a trusted adviser to captains of industry, including Henry R. Kravis of the private equity firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company and Peter R. Dolan, the former chairman of Bristol-Myers Squibb. A noted humanitarian, he has also played a leading role in organizations fighting diseases in poverty-stricken nations.
Mr. Gupta is one of 23 people criminally charged in a seven-year insider trading conspiracy orchestrated by Mr. Rajaratnam, who was convicted in 2011.
In May, a jury found Mr. Gupta guilty of providing Mr. Rajaratnam with advanced word of secret, market-moving news that he learned as a Goldman director.
Mr. Gupta's sentence is far less than the 11 years being served by Mr. Rajaratnam in a federal prison in Ayer, Mass. But it is in line with prison terms handed down by Judge Rakoff in other recent insider trading cases.
The judge rejected the recommendation from Mr. Gupta's lawyers for a sentence of probation combined with a “rigorous and lengthy program of community service†that included a proposal to work in Rwanda on a health program to combat H.I.V.
