British technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch has been extradited to the United States, where he will be charged with committing illegal acts.
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This criminal proceeding is related to the sale of Autonomy, a company co-founded by Mike Lynch, Hewlett-Packard. The value of this transaction amounted to $11 billion.
Extradited to the United States, the businessman once had the nickname of the British Bill Gates in the business environment. Now his status has changed, and he will appear before the court, which will charge him, including involvement in fraudulent activities. Mike Lynch denies any wrongdoing.
The essence of the charges is that, according to the supervisory authorities, the British entrepreneur deliberately overestimated the value of his software company’s enterprise during the conclusion of a deal with HP in 2011.
The British Home Office confirmed to the media that Mike Lynch was extradited to the United States last Thursday, May 11.
The billionaire businessman, who is the founder investor of the British cybersecurity firm Darktrace, has long resisted the efforts of American prosecutors aimed at putting him in the dock. US court documents contain information that Mike Lynch had to post a $100 million bail. This measure was explained by the fact that the authorities stated that the entrepreneur was highly likely to flee as part of attempts to avoid extradition.
The British entrepreneur will be in San Francisco. He will be supervised by private security, which he will have to pay for.
The court statement says that after a lengthy extradition procedure in the United Kingdom, the accused finally landed on American shores to appear in court, accompanied by the United States Bailiff Service.
In April, Mike Lynch lost an appeal in the High Court. He stated that the trial should take place in the UK.
The British Home Office reported that on April 21, the High Court refused the businessman’s permission to appeal his extradition. As a result, the statutory 28-day deadline for extradition to the United States was applied.
In 2011, Autonomy was the largest British company specializing in software development. The deal with HP was one of the largest takeover of the British technology business in history.
In 2012, HP reduced the cost of Autonomy by $8.8 billion. The company also stated that the practice of deception was applied to it when concluding the deal. HP claims that the value of the deal was unreasonably inflated through manipulation by Mike Lynch.
For more than a decade, HP, Mike Lynch, and former Autonomy CFO Sushovan Hussain have been involved in litigation. Mr. Hussain got out of this process earlier. In 2019, he was sentenced to five years in prison and fined four million dollars.
As we have reported earlier, Briton Pleads Guilty in US to 2020 Twitter Hack.
