A person at Goldman Sachs Group, who has not been identified or charged in a broad US insider-trading probe, was caught on a wiretap leaking secrets about Intel and Apple, a lawyer for accused former Goldman board member Rajat Gupta said in court yesterday.

Lawyer Gary Naftalis, in a heated exchange with US prosecutor Reed Brodsky during a pre-trial hearing, said the Goldman person leaked confidential information about the two companies to Raj Rajaratnam, the Galleon Group hedge-fund founder convicted of insider-trading charges last year.

Gupta, the best-known corporate executive accused in a sweeping prosecution of insider-trading at hedge funds in recent years, denies criminal charges that he tipped Rajaratnam with Goldman Sachs and Procter & Gamble Co. secrets between 2007 and 2009. His trial is scheduled to begin in May.

Naftalis told US District Judge Jed Rakoff the defense believed “there is a much more circumstantial case that person should be sitting in the box rather than us.”