British businessman Mike Lynch was acquitted Thursday of all 15 fraud charges in connection with the $11.1 billion sale of his company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
The trial, which began in March in San Francisco, follows a long extradition battle from England to the United States, where Lynch first faced charges in 2018. Prosecutors accused him of inflating sales figures, misleading regulators, and deceiving HP, which… Sales value recorded. The full value of independence was withdrawn shortly after the deal, citing significant accounting issues.
“I am elated with today's verdict and grateful to the jury for their attention to the facts over the past 10 weeks,” Lynch said. “My sincere thanks to my legal team for their hard work on my behalf. I am looking forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovation in my field.
During the trial, Lynch maintained his innocence, maintaining that Home Rule was not fraudulent, although he admitted it had flaws. He claimed to have limited involvement in the day-to-day operations and accounting practices of the company, and attributed any wrongdoing to other executives and employees.
However, prosecutors portrayed Lynch as the mastermind behind a long-running fraud, and called more than 30 witnesses to support their case. They alleged that Autonomy misrepresented itself as a software company while often bundling hardware and software sales to inflate revenues, and alleged that Lynch orchestrated the deceptive practices.
Despite these allegations, the jury found in favor of Lynch, a verdict that his attorneys, Christopher Morvillo and Brian Heberlig, hailed as a “resounding repudiation” of government wrongdoing.
“The evidence presented at trial showed conclusively that Mike Lynch was innocent,” Morvillo and Heberlig said. “This ruling concludes the book on a 13-year sustained effort to pin HP's well-documented incompetence on Dr. Lynch. Thank God the truth has finally triumphed.”
Once celebrated as one of the stars of the British technology industry, Lynch was honored with an OBE in 2006 and elected as a Fellow of both the Royal Academy of Engineering and the Royal Society in 2008 and 2014 respectively.
