Global Courant 2023-05-12 15:27:51
The tech entrepreneur faces 20 years in prison for fraud in HP’s $11 billion acquisition of British software company Autonomy.
Mike Lynch, co-founder of British software company Autonomy, has been extradited to the United States to face criminal charges in a nearly 10-year legal battle and fall out of favor for a man once hailed as Britain’s answer. Britain on Bill Gates.
Lynch faces 17 charges over Hewlett Packard’s (HP) acquisition of Autonomy for $11 billion, the company he grew into Britain’s leading technology company before breaking up in spectacular fashion after being bought by HP in 2011.
The British Home Office said on Friday that Lynch was extradited on Thursday.
He arrived in San Francisco on a commercial flight accompanied by U.S. marshals, court documents showed.
Lynch, who appeared in court on Thursday, was ordered by a judge to post a $100 million bond, hand over his passport and be under 24-hour surveillance to secure his release.
Lynch, 57, who has always denied all allegations, could face up to 20 years in prison.
Extensive Fraud
Once lauded by academics, scientists and politicians for creating a software giant based on his pioneering research at Cambridge University, Lynch has spent the past decade pursuing lawsuits related to the HP acquisition.
The deal quickly soured. Within a year, HP wrote down Autonomy’s value by $8.8 billion and later filed a civil lawsuit in London against Lynch and Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy’s former chief financial officer.
A British judge ruled in January 2022 that Lynch was the mastermind behind an elaborate fraud to inflate the value of Autonomy, meaning the Silicon Valley company substantially succeeded in its civil case.
Lynch had said HP didn’t know what it was doing with Autonomy and didn’t really understand its technology.
Meanwhile, the US had criminally prosecuted Lynch for wire fraud and securities fraud.
He challenged extradition proceedings, but on April 21, the UK Supreme Court denied him permission to appeal. His lawyers had argued that he should be prosecuted in Britain.
“The legal reach of the United States in the UK threatens the rights of all British citizens and the sovereignty of the UK,” Lynch said in April when his appeal was rejected.
Not guilty
Lynch pleaded not guilty to the 17 charges he faces in the US, court documents showed, and a status conference will be held May 19 to set a trial date. His net worth was estimated by the court at $450 million.
In 2019, Hussain was convicted of fraud in the US and sentenced to five years in prison.
Lynch’s high-profile legal battle has also raised questions for Darktrace, a FTSE 250 UK cybersecurity firm.
Lynch was central to its creation, and he and his wife, Angela Bacares, own about 10 percent of the £2 billion ($2.5 billion) company, according to Refinitiv data.
Darktrace said in February that Lynch had no part in running it and was not on its board.
