Tech entrepreneur has long maintained that any case against him should be heard in Britain
Mike Lynch, the tech entrepreneur accused of leading Britain’s biggest ever corporate fraud, has launched a legal bid to have a string of US criminal charges against him thrown out.
Mr Lynch, the founder of the former FTSE 100 software company Autonomy, has filed to dismiss the 17 charges against him, saying the US has no jurisdiction over the case.
His lawyers describe the charges, which could lead to decades in prison, as “impermissibly extraterritorial” and say they contain “fatal legal deficiencies”.
Mr Lynch, 58, is accused of inflating Autonomy’s value by manipulating its accounts ahead of its £7bn sale to Hewlett Packard in 2011. He was extradited to San Francisco earlier this year to stand trial and has pleaded not guilty.