Ex Moore Capital trader jailed in UK's largest insider dealing probe

LONDON, March 19 (Reuters) - A former trader at U.S. hedge fund Moore Capital was sentenced to 19 months in jail by a London court and fined 100,000 pounds ($147,370) on Thursday after becoming the third man to plead guilty in Britain's largest insider dealing investigation.

Julian Rifat, dubbed "the face of Moore Capital" by investigators, is one of the most high-profile professionals charged in connection with an eight-year inquiry codenamed Operation Tabernula, which hit the headlines in 2010 after police launched the first of 10 arrests across southern England.

The investigation, named after London bars such as The Rack and Tenter, The Crispin and The Gable in which the spoils of illegal trading were divided, is part of a crackdown on a crime that UK regulators only began prosecuting in 2009.

Rifat, who was arrested on his 41st birthday five years ago and pleaded guilty last November, passed on confidential, market moving tips gathered from the London offices of New York-based Moore Capital to former broker Graham Shelley via text messages on unregistered pay-as-you-go mobile phones.

Shelley, who once worked for Novum Securities, organised the trading in a scam that generated more than 250,000 pounds, bought Rifat a 15,000 pound luxury family holiday to Oman and organised a 48,500 pound payment for a Range Rover.

($1 = 0.6786 pounds) (Reporting by Kirstin Ridley, editing by Sinead Cruise)