Co-founder of UK software business Autonomy, Mike Lynch, has been extradited to the United States to face criminal charges after a nearly decade-long court fight.
Lynch is facing 17 accusations stemming from Hewlett Packard’s $11 billion acquisition of Autonomy, the business he built into Britain’s premier computer firm before it was bought out by HP in 2011.
Lynch was extradited on May 11, according to Britain’s interior ministry.
He arrived in San Francisco on a commercial aeroplane with the assistance of US Marshals.
Lynch appeared in court on Thursday and was ordered by a judge to pay a $100 million bond, surrender his passport, and be placed under 24-hour guard in order to be released.
Lynch, 57, has always denied any wrongdoing and faces up to 20 years in prison.
According to court filings, Lynch pled not guilty to 17 counts in federal court in the United States on Thursday, and a status conference will be held on May 19 to set a trial date. The US courts valued his fortune at $450 million.
He was formerly acclaimed by academics, scientists, and politicians for establishing a software behemoth based on his groundbreaking research at Cambridge University, but he has spent the last decade defending lawsuits connected to the HP takeover.
The agreement rapidly turned sour. Within a year, HP cut down Autonomy’s worth by $8.8 billion and filed a civil lawsuit in London against Lynch and Autonomy’s former CFO Sushovan Hussain.
In the litigation, a British judge concluded in January 2022 that Lynch had masterminded an intricate scam to boost Autonomy’s valuation, implying that the Silicon Valley firm had considerably won its civil case.
Hussain, Lynch’s former coworker, was convicted of fraud and sentenced to five years in jail in the United States in 2019.
