British tech mogul Mike Lynch thought he would die in jail had he not been cleared of charges that he defrauded Hewlett-Packard (HP) in a multi-billion-dollar deal.
Speaking in his first interview since being acquitted from charges relating to HP’s $11.1bn (£8.6bn) acquisition of Autonomy, the firm he founded, in 2011, the entrepreneur said a lung condition would have made it “difficult [for him] to survive” in prison.
Lynch, who at one stage also owned over 20 per cent of UK tech darling Darktrace, was extradited to the US last May for a trial that acquitted him on all 15 felony counts over the deal with HP.
He faced over two decades in a US prison if convicted of the fraud and conspiracy allegations, and, during the trial, he spent 13 months under house arrest until a verdict was reached last month.
Speaking to The Times, Lynch said: “I’d had to say goodbye to everything and everyone, because I didn’t know if I’d ever be coming back.
“I have various medical things that would have made it difficult to survive.”
He added that he was unlikely to live to see freedom because of his age and serious lung condition.
Recounting his emotions when the verdicts were returned, he said: “When you hear that answer, you jump universes.
“If this had gone the wrong way, it would have been the end of my life as I have known it in any sense.”
Lynch is now campaigning for an extradition treaty between the UK and US overhauled, and is considering funding a British equivalent to the Innocence Project, a non-profit organisation that campaigns for the freedom of people who have been wrongly convicted.
“It has to be wrong that a US prosecutor has more power over a British citizen living in England that the UK police do,” he said.
“The system can sweep individuals away. There needs to be a contrarian possibility that’s saying, ‘right, the whole world thinks you’re guilty – but actually, was that a fair conviction?’”