Drag Autonomy founder's 'fraudulent guns' and 'grasping claws' to the US for a criminal trial, thunders barrister Autonomy founder Mike Lynch is part of a gang of "English thieves" who deserve to be extradited for targeting "their fraudulent guns" and "grasping claws" at "American companies and American money," the US government's barrister told a London court yesterday. Mark Summers QC did not hold back in his opening statement as he …
> "The most important word in section 83A(2)(a) is the word 'a'. It does not ask you whether 'the' substantial measure occurred in the UK, it asks merely whether 'a' substantial measure of the conduct occurred in the UK. A substantial measure of conduct can occur in the UK even if the majority, even if the preponderance of it, is US centric."
That seems a poor distinction for the pro-extradition side to make, you'd expect them to be arguing the other way, as their argument seems to say that it just needs to be a substantial measure, rather than the majority of the conduct.
Which is reasonable, except:
> (2)For the purposes of this section, the extradition would not be in the interests of justice if the judge— (a)decides that a substantial measure of D's relevant activity was performed in the United Kingdom; and
So their argument seems to be that a minority of the conduct (so long as it is in itself a substantial measure) would be enough to bar extradition.
Are El Reg sure it was the US's barrister that said this, and not the defence?
Why would they after the forum bar. Declining to prosecute let alone extradote hackers and one digital peeping tom doesn't exactly make for a great incentive to help. Won't be surprised if Mr. Lynch is suddenly suicidal, autistic, or suffering Alzheimer's.
I don't think Biden is going to be willing to Boris any favors after the latter ran his mouth.
There is no evidence that she or her husband had any position of note. Just that they worked on a US base.
The dumb thing is that the driving offence is unrelated to her job and, unless you are implying it was deliberate, would be unlikely to result in more than a suspended sentence.
Lots of people have car crashes. Mostly they don’t go to jail. She’s probably in more trouble for skipping the country...
You never, ever, reveal your agents - even after they are long dead. Once the opposition knows someone is or was an Agent, every contact they have ever had comes under scrutiny just in case it might have resulted in some action being taken that might be of detriment to that opposition group or their friends. And if someone else reveals them, it doesn't matter if you refuse to confirm or deny they were an agent - confirming it means they are or were an agent, denying it means you are trying to cover up that they are or were an agent...
And the other big question of course, is what was an active US Intelligence Officer (alleged) up to in the UK anyway? Other than driving on the wrong side of the road, that is.
While I agree with you in spirit, I do not in practice. The US actively prosecutes and imprisons senior executives for financial crimes. High flying businessmen in orange jumpsuits is not an uncommon sight.
But I'm racking my brains for when the last FTSE500 board member was put away. Oh, now I do. From Wikipedia:
"Ernest Walter Saunders (born 21 October 1935) is a British former business manager, best known as one of the "Guinness Four", a group of businessmen who attempted fraudulently to manipulate the share price of the Guinness company. He was sentenced to five years' imprisonment, but released after 10 months as he was believed to be suffering from Alzheimer's disease, which is incurable. He subsequently made a full recovery."
It's sad that senior business people may have little fear of the English judicial system. Just remember how many fraud investigations have failed. The system here is just not designed to combat white collar crime. It's good that someone else may do their job for them. Even if I agree US Justice has its blind spots too.
I believe Mr. Saunders remains the only person in British medical history to have made a full recovery from dementia. I recall that at the time it was described as "irreversible pre-senile dementia" rather than Alzheimer's disease, but I don't know enough about either condition to know if they are related.
Quite the modern miracle.
According to Wikipedia, Noriega was imprisoned by the U.S.A, then France, then Panama before his death. No dementia, and no British "shelter" involved. Not much in the way of "communist" either, although a good deal of work with the CIA running guns.
Were you thinking perhaps of Pinochet (definitely NOT a Communist)? He wasn't really sheltering in the UK either. He travelled here for medical treatment from Chile, where he lived openly. From memory the Home Secretary (Jack Straw) made the decision to release him on grounds of physical frailty rather than dementia. The diagnosis of "vascular dementia" was made in 2002 when he was ruled unift to stand trial in Chile.
They could, but if previous cases are anything to go by, transferring evidence is apparently just too much work. The UK was going to let Bill Barr release two ISIS terrorist to the Iraqis where they would be hung after a very brief hearing. That is unless Barr promised not to seek the death penalty so the UK could hand over evidence. We can blow them up and shoot them, just not execute them......
I believe the UK case against Mr Lynch and Autonomy is still undecided. Perhaps the question of extradition to the US should be put aside until that is decided.
It would be a bad look to be found not guilty in the UK courts and then extradited to the US for what are essentially the same charges.
It does actually sat in the article that the outcome of this case will wait until the civil case is decided.
Also the alleged criminal activity that the US are citing do not actually match the charges alleged in the USA, in which case, they should be discounted. Additionally, no evidence has been presented to the UK court to substantiate these allegations so far.
So criminal activity took place in the UK, some impatient blinkered USofA company decided to skip due diligence despite warnings of imperfections and drop a metric shedload of dosh to buy said company. <-- that's certainly my synopsis
I just cannot see how this UK company harmed any USofA stockholders since it is the *board* of the USofA company that failed entirely to protect the company, and so the stockholders, by skipping due diligence. The US DOJ should be prosecuting the board members of the USofA company at the time of the takeover for gross criminal negligence or whatever they have over the pond, and the UK MOJ should be nailing up the cell door on Mr Lynch.
Having just noticed that the US DOJ tries really really hard not to prosecute rich people the stockholders should be suing the members of the board at that time.
"Having just noticed that the US DOJ tries really really hard not to prosecute rich people the stockholders should be suing the members of the board at that time.."
Looks suspiciously to me like they're hoping to try and convict a foreigner in America in order to deflect any blame from the 'board' and convince the stockholders it was ALL his fault.
Possibly, but I think it's smaller than that. People on the HP board were embarrassed. Someone called in a favor, and some prosecutor smelled a big career-enhancing case and ran with it. I suspect few or no people with real power in Justice or State care about this case at all; they're just letting it play out because now it would be embarrassing to retrench.
In fact, senior people are probably hoping extradition is denied so they can make a stink about it and use it as diplomatic leverage, and won't run the risk of Lynch being acquitted here - which would put the blame squarely back on the HP board. If extradition is denied, everyone continues to be able to tell their version of the story with no official ruling one way or another.
If everyone shouts a lot and goes home angry, we never need to know who would have won the game.
Me thinks that HP doth protest too much.
At the very least, the likes of Meg Whitman and Ray Lane should be disqualified from being board directors, but no, no, no, Whitman's incompetence was rewarded by Lane with the CEO role where she was a miserable failure.
CFO Kathy Lesjack knew HP was over-paying and she was ignored. Mind you, if she had any principles - which clearly she does not - then she should have resigned and made her position clear to shareholders prior to he acquisition.
Apotheker has admitted that he did not read the due diligence report, yet he received $13M for a 10-month demolition job on HP.
Yet somehow Mike Lynch is the guilty one.
But doing a poor job of due diligence is not a crime. Falsifying financials for the purpose of fraudulently inflating revenues and stock price is a crime. Garbage in, garbage out. While HP leadership is/was incompetent for not being skeptical, their incompetence is not a crime and certainly does not excuse Lynch's criminal behavior. If someone leaves their keys in their car and it is stolen, we say they were foolish, but the thief is still a thief.
How did you conclude that HP skipped the due diligence? The HP board can hardly be held responsible for Autonomy's fraud and other crimes. Crimes are alleged to have been committed in both nations, btw.
It's not so hard to see how stockholders were harmed. If Autonomy falsified financials, then they fraudulently inflated their stock price. Any stockholders who bought shares at the inflated price were harmed, whatever their nationality. Perhaps if the Serious Fraud Office were even slightly interested in doing their job the US wouldn't be asking for extradition.
Lynch is accused of various unlawful acts to make Autonomy appear to be far more profitable than it was. And the extradition legal argument is around whether they were carried out in the US or had an impact on US citizens or corporations. A pertinent question, therefore, would be how much of this activity occurred before HP expressed an interest?
If it happened beforehand - in the hope of luring any buyer to overbid - then that would seem to be a UK only offence that can't count as having an American component because no buyer was known at that point. Once HP expressed an interest then it seems reasonable to count any further 'ramping' activities as having an American impact.
My own recollection is that Autonomy was ludicrously overhyped from its very start, which would seem to point towards any alleged offences being UK ones.
I found one of their PowerPoint presentations once. I thought it was a very clever parody written by someone with a penchant for cladistic nomenclature. When I finished laughing, I showed it to my boss, asking which genius came up with this? She said "shhh ... forget you saw that. It's serious stuff. Apparently."
> A pertinent question, therefore, would be how much of this activity occurred before HP expressed an interest?
Well from Mark Summers QC opening submission most of it...
In addition we can infer from his statement HP were gullible and couldn't (and didn't want to) see past the polish...
Yet again HP are avoiding the real issue, that their due diligence was not performed by a set of the usual culprits (was it E&Y? I can’t recall).
I have nearly run out of popcorn. The last bag is in my coat pocket and my covfefe supply is still stuck in Zeebrugge awaiting customs clearance.
To be more precise, Apotheker declined to read KPMG's preliminary draft, and fired them before they could complete the final report. Which I suppose was a sensible cost-saving exercise if he wasn't going to read it anyway.
Reminds me of the old Mort Sahl joke about "a book this good, you don't have to read!".
It's more than due diligence. Autonomy was always an obviously overvalued company. Kind of like anything AI these days...
Basically, HP paid far over-the-odds for a company producing a very, very niche product for data scientists.
If you buy a blockchain company today, then expect a high risk of not making your money back. To buy a company you need to be sure that you buying them is going to increase that companies sales. Then you need to be sure that increase will pay back your purchase in 3-5 years.
No nothing like it at all. The HP board were in a very good position to check everything about the transaction - in fact, they had a duty to do so. They had the time and the resources to do a very good job. In fact, they did fewer checks than I would for buying a new car, and failed to heed warnings about their negligence.
A rape victim has neither the time nor the resources to check the credentials of the examiner or whether the examination is conducted properly. Not only is your comment tasteless, it is completely wrong.
Lest it be thought that Summers' fire-and-brimstone rhetoric makes him some sort of American lickspittle, he also represented Julian Assange in that man's battle to escape a US government extradition attempt.
That's hardly a ringing endorsement, El Reg, although his activity is a nice little earner for him. There is surely no doubt about that.
I wonder how long it will be before the Septics try and extradite someone for exceeding the speed limit in their home country because it was faster than that in a similar area in the United States of World.
Funny how a game played professionally in only one country on this planet where the winner can be called World Champions. They really do have an inflated opinion of their own importance eh.
Dude. The Toronto Blue Jays won that twice. Toronto is in Canada, which is not technically part of the United States.
(Yeah, I had to look that up. Also, I think it would be hilarious if, say, Japanese professional baseball teams competed in, and won, the World Series. I might actually watch a game if that happened. I expect there would be rioting in the streets.1)
1To the best of my knowledge, baseball has never led to a war, unlike football (soccer). But I have seen a baseball-related riot with my own eyes, after the Red Sox lost the Series in, um, whenever that happened. It wasn't much of a riot, as these things go; Bostonians are not among the world's great rioters. But there was some property damage and whatnot.
From a quick search because I too thought it was named after a paper...
"The New York World was established in 1860, just before the Civil War, and it fared poorly throughout the 1870s before being bought up by Joseph Pulitzer in 1883. Over the next half-century, the World was renowned for everything from its “yellow journalism” to its debut of the crossword puzzle; in 1930 it was sold and merged with the Evening Telegram to become the New York World-Telegram.
The New York World never had anything to do with the World Series, however, other than being one of the many newspapers to report the results. The modern World Series (like its predecessor series waged between National League and American Association teams from 1884-1890) was so named not because of any affiliation with a corporate sponsor, but because the winner was considered the “world’s champion” — the title was therefore simply a shortened form of the phrase “world’s championship series.”"
The sport is run by a corporation, Americans in general have no say in what they decide to call the events. Though if a country is the only one that plays a sport, that would make a winner effectively world champion. The U.S is perhaps the biggest but is not the only country that plays baseball professionally.
I'm currently in negotiations with a developer in America who wishes to buy Bristol bridge. I know damned well he thinks he's going to get the Brunel designed suspension bridge across the Avon, as the money he's splashing around is far too much for the concrete monstrosity that is Bristol bridge and spans the tiny river Frome. But hey ho, he's the buyer, and it's not my job to advise he opens up Wikipedia and has a closer look.
HP is a big company. It had its own review of Autonomy finances. It's own internal high-ups were against the pruchase, but the nitwit at the top made the deal anyway.
So, who is going to drag Apotheker in court to accuse him of 'grasping claws' ?
Not to mention blatant incompetence ?
>In this case, weren't the grasping claws on the US hands?
My thoughts also, as if memory serves me correctly, it was HP that approached and courted Autonomy, I also don't remember Autonomy advertising itself as being "for Sale".
The final deal - all cash and at a 79% premium to Autonomy's prebid share price, would seem to support this point-of-view.
I took "expectation of local justice" in the technical legal sense of "a right to avoid foreign prosecution", in parallel with e.g. "expectation of privacy". I don't think it was intended as a slur, merely a claim that "if the alleged activity follows this pattern, the accused should be made available to the justice system of the offended country".
Not saying I agree with it, just that I don't think it was meant as an attack on the UK judicial system.
Of course, just using the phrase "fraudulent guns" might be enough to lose the case.
Though this could be established as an important legal principle. "Your honor, it's true my client attempted to hold up the bank, but the teller was able to discern that his 'gun' was in fact just his thumb and forefinger, and therefore fraudulent." But would it be mitigating or aggravating?
After the Mark Summers QC "English thieves" opening that had me holding back the tears I’m convinced extradite the cad.
He certainly paints the story, HP a hick from the country first time in the big city is singled out by a gang of "English thieves". Who with their smooth, sophisticated dare I say decadent ways con the proverbial naive American abroad HP out of his poor old bedridden mothers farm. Extradition is too good for that bounder Mike Lynch, hang him I say.
I think I may have heard this story before something about a cow some beans I think there was also a giant in there somewhere.
Seriously a company is only worth what someone is willing to pay for it. HP with their accountants and bankers went over the company. So, the reports either valued at the price HP paid or they valued much less. If they valued it much less why pay what they did? What HP’s board did not read the due diligence reports then it should be the HP board in the dock.
The English man they bought the company from did not look like this. https://c8.alamy.com/comp/BPTMP7/terry-thomas-actor-1968-BPTMP7.jpg
>HP a hick from the country first time in the big city <
In amongst all the he-said / she-said, there's a little bit of interesting international finance: the American laws are different than the English laws.
The Americans (claim to have) depended on the representations made by the English. In the USA, those false representations were illegal, which is why they didn't need an audit report and why there has been an American conviction. In London, those representations were only illegal if they contained specific false facts: just making up BS is only business as usual.
Two countries divided by a common finance system.
8:18pm AEDT
Lynch is alleged by the US government to have CLAIMED TO HAVE followed standard American business practices. Which is part of what made his behavior illegal in the USA. The American courts have ACCEPTED THAT Lynch represented that his statements were following American standard business practice, and that HP accepted that representation.
I'm not barracking for either side: I don't know if it was reasonable for HP to expect a British firm to respect American law, or if the American courts got it right, or what British courts will make of the same allegations.
If the Americans were alleging that Lynch had /actually/ followed standard American business practice, he wouldn't be in court.
10:51AM AEDT
The discussion is now about HP, a corporation of dubious ethics, who got caught by others who out played HP at their game. This HP is a name plate and exists merely to mine leftovers after all the productive and innovative potions have been sold. HP must push the case as a smoke screen to cover the hollow core so the present board can safely parachute from the wreckage. Of course money does open door that thee and me will never see.
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