US tech giant Hewlett Packard won a multibillion-dollar fraud case on Friday after buying British software company Autonomy in 2011.
A year after the deal, HP accused Autonomy faked their accounts, claimed that they had increased in value and caused great damage to the US company as the real situation emerged after the sale of $11.1 billion (about rs 83.251).
HP sued two executives, Mike Lynch, the British founder of Autonomy, and former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain, for about $5 billion (about Rs 37,500).
In a summary of his decision in what is believed to be the largest-ever civil fraud trial in Britain, judge Robert Hildyard said HP and the other disputants had “substantially won”.
Hildyard said damages will be determined at a later date.
HP claims the two men have “artificially increased Autonomy’s reported revenue, revenue growth, and gross margin … over an extended period of time.”
The company announced $8.8 billion (about Rs 66,000) for the company’s value just over a year after the sale.
Interior Secretary Priti Patel on Friday signed an order to extradite Lynch to the United States, where he faces separate criminal proceedings over the sale, the Interior Department said in a statement.
Lynch has the right to apply to the Supreme Court to appeal the extradition order, it added.
Lynch has denied any wrongdoing.
An attorney for the businessman, Kelwin Nicholls, said the court’s ruling was “disappointing”, adding that Lynch “intended to appeal”.
Another attorney for Lynch, Chris Morvillo, said his client “firmly denies the charges against him in the US and will continue to fight to establish his innocence”.
Lynch is “a British citizen running a British company in the UK, subject to British laws and rules and that’s where the matter should be addressed,” Morvillo said.
Lynch, from Suffolk in eastern England, claims HP is making him “a scapegoat for their failures.”
HP attorney Laurence Rabinowitz testified in court that Autonomy used “various types” of fraudulent devices to increase or generate revenue.
A US court in 2018 convicted Autonomy’s chief financial officer Hussain of sales fraud and jailed him for five years.
