British tech tycoon Mike Lynch - known as the Bill Gates of Britain - has been cleared of US fraud charges over the £8.6billion sale of his software firm to Hewlett-Packard.
A jury in San Francisco found him not guilty on all counts. The stunning verdict came after he was accused of inflating the value of his company, Autonomy, ahead of its sale.
Dr Lynch, who faced more than 20 years in prison if convicted, said: "I am elated with the verdict and grateful to the jury for their attention to the facts over the last ten weeks.
“My deepest thanks go to my legal team for their tireless work on my behalf. I am looking forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field."
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Lynch faced 20 years in prison if convicted on all the charges he faced (Bloomberg via Getty Images)During the trial, Lynch once hailed as Britain’s king of technology, took the stand to defend himself. The not-guilty verdicts reached on Thursday by a federal court jury in San Francisco followed an 11-week criminal trial that delved into the history of Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) 2011 acquisition of Autonomy.
At first, the company celebrated the purchase as a huge coup that would propel the company down a promising new path, but then quickly came to regret under its then-CEO Meg Whitman.
The jury acquitted Lynch on all 15 felony counts facing him. Toward the end of the trial, US District Judge Charles Breyer threw out a count of securities fraud included in the US Justice Department case against him in an indictment dating back to 2018.
Lynch claimed that he and his company were being used as a scapegoat for other financial issues related to HP (Bloomberg via Getty Images)It took years to extradite Lynch from the UK, and then there was more legal wrangling before the trial began in mid-March. Lynch, 58, had been free on £78million bail. Being accused of a massive fraud represented a dramatic turn in fortune for the entrepreneur.
The acquittal vindicates Lynch, who spent years fiercely denying he did anything wrong while painting HP as a technological train wreck. It’s yet another setback for HP, which had spent years blaming Lynch for duping the company into a deal that deepened its troubles and stained a legacy dating back to the company's 1939 inception in a Silicon Valley garage.
After prosecutors called more than 30 witnesses to the stand to help make their case, Lynch testified in his own defence over several days last month and occasionally spoke directly to the jurors while explaining various turns of British phrasing.
Like his lawyers, he contended he did nothing wrong and argued that Whitman unjustly turned him and Autonomy into a scapegoat for HP’s mismanagement and deteriorating financial condition.
Whitman, who became HP’s CEO after an unsuccessful 2010 campaign to become California’s governor, recognised £6.9billion in losses in the Autonomy deal and eventually fired Lynch in 2012 while accusing him of cooking the books.
She also laid off thousands of workers as HP’s fortunes sagged and eventually split the company in two to separate its personal computer and printer operations from products and services sold to other businesses.
Although Whitman wasn’t called to testify, the trial probed into HP’s downfall under her direction.
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