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Mike Lynch was on board the yacht Bayesian, which sank overnight off the coast of Sicily.

The technology magnate had only returned to the UK in June after battling the US justice system for 13 months against allegations of conspiracy and wire fraud in connection with the sale of his company to Hewlett-Packard (HP).

If convicted, he would have faced a prison sentence of up to 25 years.

Following HP’s claim that Lynch had effectively overcharged them by $5 billion (€4.5 billion), the prosecution sought his extradition to the US for trial. Lynch fought extradition for 12 years until he was finally forced to fly to the US in May 2023 to face charges and await trial.

13 months of house arrest in California

He was held under house arrest in San Francisco for 13 months pending his 12-week trial. Since less than 0.5% of federal criminal cases in the United States end in acquittal, Lynch’s chances were not good.

Lynch has always maintained his innocence, saying HP was trying to blame him for “buyer’s remorse.” In other words, he explained, the company regrets how much it paid, but that was its decision and, he stressed, it was neither a conspiracy nor fraud.

The legal battle lasted more than a decade and included a lengthy civil fraud trial in the UK during which HP was awarded damages and cost Lynch more than $30 million (€27.2 million). However, on June 6, 2024, he was acquitted of all 15 charges.

On July 27, Lynch gave an exclusive interview to The Times in which he detailed his defense against the charges, the trial and the millions of documents of evidence. He recounted how he had insisted on taking the stand himself to show that he was not the “pantomime villain” that prosecutors wanted to portray him as.

The decision proved to be the right one. Lynch’s lawyer Brian Heberlig said in his closing argument: “This was the prosecutor’s moment to go straight for the jugular and present the best evidence he had to prove Mike Lynch’s guilt. What happened? You saw it happen. He reviewed a chronology of documents without asking probing questions.”

“To conclude that Mike committed fraud would require an exponential jump that is not justified by the evidence,” he said.

Return to Great Britain finally permitted

The married father of two children was allowed to come home. In the same interview, Danny Fortson of the Times, who had followed the earnings from the beginning, wrote that he felt that Lynch was “emerging from something akin to a near-death experience.”

Lynch replied, “That’s exactly how I handled it.”

“It’s bizarre, but now you have a second life. The question is what you want to do with it.”