“Fabulous Fab” must be feeling good.
Lawyers for ex-Goldman Sachs banker Fabrice Tourre rested today without calling a single witness, including hedge-fund honcho John Paulson, who played a key role in the case.
The move — after two weeks of testimony by witnesses for the Securities and Exchange Commission — suggested the defense team was feeling cocky enough to send the case to the jury.
Both the government and Tourre’s lawyers are set to launch into their roughly 2 ¹/₂ -hour closing arguments in the fraud trial with the nine-member jury likely to start deliberating on Wednesday.
The SEC has alleged that the 34-year-old midlevel banker misled investors about the role of Paulson in a complex $1 billion subprime-mortgage deal known as Abacus.
The SEC called nearly a dozen witnesses to testify, including Tourre. His three days on the stand were the highlight of an otherwise jargon-filled trial that lulled some jurors to sleep.
Manhattan federal Judge Katherine Forrest stressed not overwhelming the jury with a litany of witnesses, especially after the defendant had already testified.
“Once the jury has heard from Mr. Tourre, they’re going to feel like the case is all but over for them because the case is the Tourre case, it’s about Mr. Tourre,” Forrest said on Friday during a break while the jury was not present.
“And they’re going to be very anxious, I think, to know how much longer they’re going to have to be here,” she added.
Both the government and the defense opted to trim their witness lists, which included Paulson.
Paulson & Co., which hasn’t been accused of wrongdoing, made more than $1 billion betting against Abacus, a synthetic collateralized-debt obligation.
Tourre — whose nickname, “Fabulous Fab,” emerged in an embarrassing e-mail to his then-girlfriend — is accused of tricking investors into thinking Paulson was backing the deal.
Today’s session kicked off in the chilly courtroom with an hour-and-42-minute video deposition from a former Goldman sales official in London.
Michael Nartey testified in his video deposition that he didn’t make it a practice to identify the investors betting against, or going short, these synthetic CDO deals because it’s usually “confidential.”
His testimony could bolster the defense’s argument that it wasn’t industry practice to identify the counterparty in the complex deal at the center of Tourre’s case.
mark.decambre@nypost.com