18 March 2024, 17:43 GMTUpdated 47 minutes agoImage supply, Getty Pictures/BloombergImage caption, Mike Lynch arriving at federal court docket in San Francisco on MondayBritish tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch is showing in court docket within the US, as his trial on fraud prices will get beneath method.As soon as dubbed “Britain’s Invoice Gates”, Mr Lynch is accused of overinflating the worth of his software program agency when he offered it to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011.The 58-year-old, who faces 16 prices, faces as much as 25 years in jail if convicted. He denies the claims.He was extradited to the US final yr, after a UK choose dominated in favour of HP in the same civil fraud case.In opening arguments, Mr Lynch’s legal professional Reid Weingarten stated the tycoon was making ready to take the stand at trial, as he seeks to defend a document that has been severely battered for the reason that sale of the agency Autonomy for greater than $11bn (£8.6bn). On the time, the deal ranked because the largest-ever takeover of a British know-how enterprise.However only a yr later, HP wrote down the worth of Autonomy by $8.8bn and claimed it had been duped into overpaying for the corporate.Mr Weingarten instructed the jury that Mr Lynch had centered on know-how, leaving the funds to others. “Mike had many sleepless nights worrying about Autonomy, however not about accounting,” Mr Weingarten stated, in response to the Reuters information company.Mr Lynch co-founded Autonomy in 1996. It grew to turn out to be one of many UK’s high 100 public corporations, recognized for software program that would extract helpful data from “unstructured” sources akin to cellphone calls, emails or video.US prosecutors in San Francisco say Mr Lynch backdated agreements to mislead concerning the firm’s gross sales; hid the agency’s loss-making enterprise reselling {hardware}; and intimidated or paid off individuals who raised issues, amongst different claims. In court docket filings, his attorneys have argued that the “actual purpose for the write-down” was a failure by HP to handle the merger. “Then, with its inventory worth crumbling beneath the burden of its personal mismanagement, circled the wagons to guard its new leaders and wantonly accused” Mr Lynch of fraud, they wrote. Mr Lynch, a former UK authorities adviser who sat on the boards of the BBC and the British Library, vigorously fought makes an attempt by US prosecutors to convey him to trial in America, which is thought for its punitive strategy to white-collar crime. In 2019, Autonomy’s former chief monetary officer Sushovan Hussain was jailed for 5 years and fined hundreds of thousands of {dollars} on 16 counts of fraud, securities fraud and different prices.In 2022, HP gained a civil fraud case towards Mr Lynch and Hussain heard by London’s Excessive Court docket. It’s now searching for a reported $4bn. In that case, Mr Lynch and Hussain argued that HP’s declare was “‘manufactured’ to cowl and justify a change of company thoughts, and to solid them as scapegoats for what in actuality is purchaser’s regret coupled with administration failings”.In addition to Mr Lynch, Autonomy’s former finance government Stephen Chamberlain can also be on trial.