Autonomy founder Mike Lynch extradited to the U.S. to face fraud charges

LONDON — British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch has been extradited to the U.S. to face fraud prices in relation to the sale of his software program firm Autonomy to Hewlett Packard.

Lynch arrived within the U.S. on Thursday afternoon and is presently detained in San Francisco till bail situations are met, his spokesperson confirmed to CNBC. He face prices of securities and wire fraud in relation to the sale of his firm Autonomy to HP for $11 billion.

The entrepreneur attended an arraignment listening to on Thursday and was ordered to pay a $100 million bail to be launched on home arrest, the spokesperson mentioned. It isn’t but clear whether or not Lynch intends to pay the bond.

“The bail set by the U.S. court docket is by U.Ok. requirements terribly excessive and is a transparent instance of the differing approaches of the U.S. and U.Ok. in the case of prosecuting allegations of white collar crime,” Thomas Garner, extradition associate at legislation agency Fladgate, informed CNBC through e mail.

It comes after Lynch misplaced a Excessive Courtroom battle to enchantment extradition final month.

Lynch, 57, bought his software program start-up Autonomy to HP in 2011 for $11.7 billion, immediately making him one of many wealthiest and most celebrated tech founders within the U.Ok.

A yr later, HP introduced an $8.8 billion write-down on the corporate, claiming that “accounting irregularities” led it to pay an excessive amount of for Autonomy, which bought information analytics software program to companies.

HP’s major accusation is that Autonomy’s execs inflated the company’s revenues by around $700 million. The corporate sued Autonomy for $5 billion. Lynch counter-sued, resulting in a fancy authorized battle that has been rumbling on for a decade.

In January final yr, then-U.Ok. Inside Minister Priti Patel approved Lynch’s extradition to the U.S., after a British judge ruled in favor of HP in a civil case in opposition to Lynch over claims that he plotted to inflate the worth of Autonomy earlier than it was purchased by HP.

Lynch is not the primary Autonomy worker to face prices within the U.S. In Could 2019, former CFO Sushovan Hussain was charged with fraud and and sentenced to five years of imprisonment.

Some within the U.Ok. tech business consider that Lynch mustn’t have been extradited. In February, a lot of entrepreneurs, together with Made.com co-founder Brent Hoberman, wrote a letter to Prime Minister Rishi Sunak complaining about America’s “unreasonable” use of an extradition treaty to deport the expertise entrepreneur.

“Is it the precise factor {that a} U.Ok. businessman working beneath U.Ok. legal guidelines is extradited to the U.S.? I do not consider it’s, and I do not assume different enterprise individuals will assume so both,” Hoberman previously told The Sunday Times newspaper in an interview.

After writing off three quarters of Autonomy’s worth, HP sold what was left of the company to British agency Micro Focus in September 2016 as a part of an $8.8 billion deal that concerned different HP enterprise items.