A British tycoon who allegedly defrauded Hewlett-Packard when he sold his software company to the U.S. tech giant in 2011 has failed in an appeal against his extradition to the United States.
In January 2022, the then Home Secretary Priti Patel ruled Mike Lynch—who founded Autonomy in 1996—could be extradited to the United States, where he is wanted on charges of perpetrating a $5 billion (£3.9 million) fraud.
Autonomy was sold to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion (£8.8 billion) in 2011, but a year later the U.S. firm announced a huge write-down, which reduced HP Autonomy’s value by $8.8 billion (£7 billion).
Lynch’s barristers claimed District Judge Michael Snow erred by allowing Patel to make the final decision on extradition, but lawyers representing the U.S. government said Snow had made the “correct” decisions.
In their ruling, the judges said Lynch’s lawyers claimed the extradition request “was an abuse of the court’s process, and the district judge was wrong to conclude that it was not.”
One example was that the U.S. authorities claimed an email was sent by “an Autonomy employee in the United Kingdom,” when it had actually been sent by a trainee solicitor.
‘One of Largest Frauds Ever Prosecuted’
In their ruling they said: “The applicant’s extradition has been sought ... so that he can stand trial in California for fraud. The American prosecutors have described the case as ‘one of the largest frauds ever prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice.’ The value of the alleged fraud runs into the billions of dollars.”HP has already sued Lynch—who has a Ph.D. in signal processing from Cambridge University and founded the company in the city—and Autonomy’s former chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussain, for $5 billion (£3.9 billion) at the High Court in London.
A High Court judge, Mr. Justice Hildyard, who oversaw that trial, said HP had “substantially succeeded” in its various claims against the two men but warned the U.S. firm will get “substantially less” than the amount claimed in damages.
Lynch has said he intends to appeal against Hildyard’s ruling.
In the ruling by Lewis and Knowles, they made it clear the allegations against Lynch remain to be proved at trial.
But they said: “In summary, the applicant is accused of engaging in a conspiracy to provide dishonest financial and other information about Autonomy’s performance to the markets from 2009, and then to HP from about 2011 during the purchase negotiations, thereby dishonestly maintaining or inflating Autonomy’s share price, and hence, ultimately, the price which HP paid for it.”
They added, “The applicant owned a substantial number of Autonomy’s shares, and so the alleged fraud benefited him personally.”
‘Disappointed’
A spokesman for Lynch said: “Dr. Lynch is very disappointed, but is reviewing the judgment and will continue to explore his options to appeal, including to the European Court of Human Rights.”It followed the signing of the U.S.-UK Extradition Treaty in 2003.
There have been a number of controversial cases in the last 20 years, including Pentagon hacker Gary McKinnon and the so-called NatWest Three.
McKinnon, who admitted accessing NASA computers in 2002 but claimed he was looking for evidence of UFOs, fought a long campaign against extradition and in 2012 the then Home Secretary Theresa May blocked his extradition.
She said McKinnon, who was then 46, had Asperger’s syndrome, suffered from a depressive illness, and was “seriously ill.”
But the NatWest Three were not so successful.
David Bermingham, 44, Gary Mulgrew, 45, and Giles Darby, 44, were extradited and in February 2008 were jailed for 37 months each after admitting one wire fraud charge after a plea bargain.
The three men—who had originally faced 35 years in prison—admitted conspiring with employees of the collapsed Texas-based energy giant Enron to defraud their own employer, NatWest, of $19 million (£15.3 million).
