Michael Linds’ property is essentially “dragging” as his company is obliged to pay more than £ 700 million in a fraud case of the deceased British business transactions tycoon of technology drowned in shipwreck of Sicily in 2024.
Judge of the Supreme Court He decided that Hewlett Packard owes nearly 750 million pounds (about 853m euros) due to the fraud in selling Autonomy software in 2011.
According to the decision, Angela Bacares’ widow and ESME’s second daughter will not be taken, unless there is an appeal.
As Telegraph writes, his widow, Angela Bacares, has her own assets that are legally separated from her deceased husband’s property and will not be affected by the decision. Bacares’ share at Darktrace technology was worth more than £ 127 million before the sale of the business in 2024, even after selling hundreds of millions of pounds.
Leeds founded Autonomy software company in 1996, along with David Tabizel and Richard Gaunt, a company that experienced significant growth by providing services to customers such as the US government, Shell and BMW.
Autonomy was sold to HP in 2011 for $ 11 billion – but HP announced a $ 8.8 billion impairment next year after the discovery of “serious accounting irregularities” that artificially inflated the value of Autonomy, which led to civil and criminal proceedings.
His British Serious Fraud Office launched an investigation into HP’s allegations in 2013. The case was closed in 2015, as SFO did not find sufficient evidence.
Leeds was acquitted by the 15 charges he had been brought to a San Francisco court in June 2024. The indictment spoke of fraud and conspiracy, the trial lasted three months and Linds, who had been issued in the US, said he did not.
HP won a case against Leeds in the United Kingdom in 2022, after the judge accepted HP’s claim that Autonomy’s value was artificially inflated, and awarded compensation in favor of the company, although the amount is expected to be less than the $ 5 billion claimed by HP.
The British Bayesian flag, a 56 -meter -long super yacht, in August 2024, carried 22 people when it was overthrown and sank in a matter of minutes after being struck by a storm before dawn, while anchored off the northern Sicily.
Fifteen people survived, including Leeds’ wife, whose company belonged to Bayesian. Leeds’ 18 -year -old daughter Hannah was among the dead.