UK extradites ex-Autonomy boss to face US fraud trial

London (AFP/APP): British businessman Mike Lynch has been extradited to the United States to stand trial over an alleged multi-billion-dollar fraud linked to the 2011 sale of software firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard, the UK said Friday.
Britain’s interior ministry said Lynch was extradited Thursday after London’s High Court refused an appeal in April. His extradition was ordered in January 2022.
“Dr Lynch was extradited to the US on 11 May,” said a statement from the Home Office.
US officials confirmed that he had arrived in the country, while a spokesman for Lynch declined to comment.
“After lengthy extradition proceedings in the United Kingdom, Defendant Michael Richard Lynch has finally landed on our shores to stand trial, accompanied by the United States Marshals Service,” read a US court filing dated Thursday.
The document, filed in the US federal court for the northern district of California, also set bail at $100 million.
Authorities judged him to be a “serious risk of flight”, citing his four-year battle to fight extradition and his “significant” financial resources of about $450 million.
He must now be confined to an address in San Francisco and be guarded by private security at his own expense, under bail conditions outlined in the filing.
Lynch is accused of being involved in a massive fraud in the United States by inflating the value of Autonomy before its sale to HP for $11 billion in 2011.
The deal resulted in colossal financial losses for the US firm when the true situation emerged after the sale.
Lynch, from Suffolk in eastern England, disputes all charges and denies any wrongdoing.
“There is no question that the charged offenses and underlying circumstances alleged — wire fraud, securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit offenses against the United States, involving years of falsified records culminating in a deal worth billions — are serious,” the court filing said.
It added that “the weight of the evidence is undoubtedly substantial”.
HP has won a civil fraud case in Britain over the sale, with a High Court judge last year ruling that it had been duped into overpaying.
A US court in 2018 convicted Autonomy’s former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain of fraud relating to the sale and jailed him for five years.
Just one year after the sale, HP reported a write-down of $8.8 billion — including more than $5 billion it attributed to inflated data from Autonomy.
HP’s vast Autonomy takeover led to the ouster of Leo Apotheker as chief executive in September 2011, and HP subsequently said it had discovered massive accounting irregularities.
Autonomy founder Lynch has previously said that members of his management team were being unjustly blamed for the writedown.