A year after the deal, HP accused Autonomy of fudging its
accounts, claiming it had inflated its value and caused huge losses for the US
company when the true situation emerged after the $11.1-billion sale.
HP sued two executives, Mike Lynch, Autonomy's British
founder, and former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain, for around $5
billion.
In a summary of his decision in what is believed to be
Britain's biggest-ever civil fraud trial, judge Robert Hildyard said HP and the
other claimants had "substantially won."
Hildyard said the damages to be paid will be determined at a
later date.
HP claimed the two men had "artificially inflated
Autonomy's reported revenues, revenue growth and gross margins... over a
sustained period of time."
The company announced an $8.8-billion write-down of the
firm's value just over a year after the sale.
Interior minister Priti Patel on Friday signed an order for
the extradition of Lynch to the United States, where he faces separate criminal
proceedings over the sale, the Home Office said in a statement.
Lynch has the right to apply to the High Court to appeal the
extradition order, it added.
Lynch has denied any wrongdoing.
A lawyer for the businessman, Kelwin Nicholls, said the
court's ruling was "disappointing," and added that Lynch
"intends to appeal".
Another of Lynch's lawyers, Chris Morvillo, said his client
"firmly denies the charges brought against him in the US and will continue
to fight to establish his innocence".
Lynch was "a British citizen who ran a British company
in Britain, subject to British laws and rules and that is where the matter
should be resolved," Morvillo said.
Lynch, from Suffolk in eastern England, claimed HP was
making him "a scapegoat for their failures."
HP's lawyer Laurence Rabinowitz told the court that Autonomy
used "a variety" of fraudulent devices to boost or invent revenue.
A US court in 2018 convicted Autonomy's finance chief
Hussain of fraud relating to the sale and jailed him for five years.
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
.jpeg)
0 comments:
Post a Comment