Autonomy Founder Mike Lynch Loses Appeal Against Extradition To US (theguardian.com) 24
Mike Lynch, the tech entrepreneur once hailed as Britain's answer to Bill Gates, has lost an appeal against extradition to the US to answer criminal fraud charges. The Guardian reports: Lynch, the founding investor of the British cybersecurity firm Darktrace, is facing allegations that he duped the US firm Hewlett-Packard into overpaying when it struck an $11bn deal for his software firm Autonomy in 2011. Two high court judges considered Mike Lynch's challenge at a recent hearing in London and on Friday issued a ruling rejecting his appeal against extradition to face the charges.
Lynch, who could face a maximum prison sentence of 25 years if found guilty, has always denied the allegations and any wrongdoing. Lord Justice Lewis and Justice Julian Knowles ruled on Friday that Lynch, who made 500 million pounds from the sale to HP and was hailed as one of Britain's few global tech champions, should be extradited to the US to stand trial. Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy's former finance director, is already serving time in jail in the US after being found guilty of fraud relating to the same deal.
A spokesperson for Lynch said he was considering appealing to the European court of human rights. "Dr Lynch is very disappointed, but is reviewing the judgment and will continue to explore his options to appeal, including to the European court of human rights (ECHR)," he said. "The United States' legal overreach into the UK is a threat to the rights of all British citizens and the sovereignty of the UK." However, criminal defense law firm Corker Binning said that only 8% of applications to the ECHR in such cases -- seeking a Rule 39 order to stop the UK extradition until it has considered the case -- were successful last year.
Lynch, who could face a maximum prison sentence of 25 years if found guilty, has always denied the allegations and any wrongdoing. Lord Justice Lewis and Justice Julian Knowles ruled on Friday that Lynch, who made 500 million pounds from the sale to HP and was hailed as one of Britain's few global tech champions, should be extradited to the US to stand trial. Sushovan Hussain, Autonomy's former finance director, is already serving time in jail in the US after being found guilty of fraud relating to the same deal.
A spokesperson for Lynch said he was considering appealing to the European court of human rights. "Dr Lynch is very disappointed, but is reviewing the judgment and will continue to explore his options to appeal, including to the European court of human rights (ECHR)," he said. "The United States' legal overreach into the UK is a threat to the rights of all British citizens and the sovereignty of the UK." However, criminal defense law firm Corker Binning said that only 8% of applications to the ECHR in such cases -- seeking a Rule 39 order to stop the UK extradition until it has considered the case -- were successful last year.
But... (Score:2)
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Re: But... (Score:3)
Except that case isn't remotely "similar," a condition of the OP's question. ðY
Re: But... (Score:3, Informative)
Either way, the US doesn't have any policy against extraditing its own citizens. Neither does the UK. The countries that do include Austria, China, France, Germany, Japan, Norway and Russia. Theoretically, a citizen of one of those countries could murder somebody in another country and wouldn't face any consequences as long as they made it back home after doing the deed and then never left.
Re: But... (Score:4, Informative)
Germany does extradite people, but only if the alleged offence is also a crime in Germany, and excluding certain categories of offence such as political crimes. There is also a prohibition on extradition to countries with the death penalty if it would be available for the alleged crime.
Germany can also prosecute people for crimes committed abroad in some circumstances.
Re: But... (Score:2)
Germany does extradite people, but only if the alleged offence is also a crime in Germany
That's a nearly universal thing in all extraditions. The name for that is dual criminality. And Germany's constitution forbids extraditing its own nationals for any reason unless they consent.
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Theoretically, a citizen of one of those countries could murder somebody in another country and wouldn't face any consequences
Wouldn't that person be prosecuted in its own country for the murder?
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Extradition is an incredibly rare event, finding an identical case is very difficult. Most countries have only had a handful of extraditions in the past 100 years. But if you're after financial fraud, the US has extradited people to Canada for this.
Re:But... (Score:5, Informative)
According to the UK Home Office [blog.gov.uk], yes:
The US has refused one UK extradition request. Conversely, the UK has refused 24 extradition requests from the US.
That one case [bbc.com] is rather infamous.
They also have decade-old counts of cases [www.gov.uk] in each direction. (Wikipedia and other sources quote the US embassy in London as saying that in the cases where extradition did not happen, either the person returned to the UK on their own, or extradition became legally unnecessary for other reasons.)
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Would the USA all a foreign country to extradite a US citizen to another country to face similar charges ?
Yes. That is literally how extradition works. A bi-lateral agreement to extradite people for crimes which are legally recognised in both countries. The US legal system does not consider citizenship to be a relevant to the extradition. A couple of other countries do, e.g. Germany will not extradite a citizen.
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The issue in the UK and Europe in general is that the US legal system and conditions in prison are not up to our standards. Okay, we don't always live up to them either, but people can avoid extradition by arguing that their rights would be abused under the US system.
In particular the ability to get what Europe would consider a fair trial can be questionable in some circumstances. Prison conditions in parts of the US are also what under the ECHR would be a human rights violation. Depending on the state that
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Can't do the time, don't do the crime...
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Can't do the time
No one is discussing about not doing the time. It's a question of where the time is done.
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The issue in the UK and Europe in general is that the US legal system and conditions in prison are not up to our standards.
No it's not the standards that are called into question. People's abuse of rights claims are successful on only a very few subsets of cases, the most common being a crime for which the death penalty exists in the USA, and terrorism (knowing that in the USA you may be subject to torture).
Simply going to prison in the USA is not grounds for blocking extradition.
In particular the ability to get what Europe would consider a fair trial can be questionable in some circumstances.
Yep, only in the case of terrorism charges. No other cases has "fair trial" been grounds for blocking extradition to the USA, a country largely seen b
Do your due diligence (Score:5, Interesting)
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This was Leo Apotheker's doing. He admitted that he didn't read its quarterly reports until after he advised the board to approve the purchase. His desire to turn HP into a pure-software juggernaut to take on Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle led him down a reckless path and nearly destroyed the company. For that, he got $13.2 million and appointing to a bunch of company boards.
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HTML tags. I hates them.
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Due diligence typically uncovers little more than what is provided by another company. That word doesn't magically grant you the ability to see hidden or fraudulent activities that someone is intentionally hiding. It's not God's own financial wallhack.
It really doesn't matter how much due diligence was done. If there was actual fraudulent activity during the purchase then the efforts required to uncover it have absolutely zero bearing on the legal case.
The fact that this person fought extradition rather tha
Re:Do your due diligence (Score:4, Insightful)
The fact that this person fought extradition rather than simply making their case would suggest that due diligence is likely not the issue here.
Most people who are not in the US don't want to be extradited to the US, regardless of whether they are guilty or not. The UK doesn't have a particularly enlightened justice system (by European standards), but it very rarely throws multi-decade life-ending sentences at anyone - even if you've killed a few people. And almost everyone gets the possibility of parole after half the term is served, so even a 25 year sentence for murder means about 12 years in a cell if you behave.
The UK also doesn't have the bizarre plea bargaining system, which I guess makes sense to people who have grown up with it, but just seems to have a huge potential for unjust outcomes. I mean, the other guy in this case got five years - if he was facing, say 50 years if he goes to court, and they offer him 5 if he admits guilt and 'rolls' on the other guy, a LOT of innocent people would take that deal.
The US is welcome to have whatever justice system it wants, and this guy did a deal with a US company, so fair enough that he is exposed to the US justice system, but I can completely understand why he doesn't want to get dragged across the pond, even if he is innocent.
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Sounds like HP didn't do their due diligence and have buyers remorse...
Correct. I don't know how to find it, but at the time we had a big, informative article on what went down. I'm working from memory here so I can't promise everything is 100% correct, but I'll do my best.
HP's CEO at the time became convinced that this acquisition was key to making HP a global player, so he put a lot of pressure on management and the board to approve the purchase with minimal investigation into Autonomy. Some stock market analyst had a lot of concerns about the numbers Autonomy was
Same as murdering your Spanish teacher (Score:2)
Wrong to think the answer might be caveat emptor (Score:3, Informative)
Despite lengthy legal submissions from Lynch's lawyers, and the popular belief that HPE rushed headlong into a too-good-to-be-true deal without carefully checking first, this wasn't a point that had any weight in law, said Justice Hildyard. "It would be beguiling but wrong to think the answer might be caveat emptor," said the judge, addressing the point that HPE failed to carry out proper due diligence before committing to the Autonomy purchase.
Mike Lynch and Autonomy's then-CFO Sushovan Hussain also misled not only auditors Deloitte but also their own company's audit committee, said the judge, while giving his decision on Autonomy's reseller transactions.
"Dr Lynch and Mr Hussain kept a very careful watch over revenues, especially towards the end of a quarter when Autonomy would have to post its results," said Mr Justice Hildyard.
"If such a shortfall became apparent, a VAR sale would be arranged, usually on the same day, to cover it, with no questions asked."
Those sales "had no commercial substance" and were purely "a means by which Autonomy could maintain the appearance of meeting revenue targets at the end of a quarter."
https://www.theregister.com/20... [theregister.com]
ECHR (Score:2)