British entrepreneur Mike Lynch says he fears he will die in prison before being cleared of fraud charges related to the multibillion-dollar sale of his software company.
Dr Lynch, once known as the “British Bill Gates”, was acquitted last month of charges relating to the sale of his software company to the US tech giant for £9 billion.
The 59-year-old was extradited to the United States to stand trial and could face up to 25 years in prison.
In his first interview since being acquitted of all charges, the father-of-two told The Times he had found life in prison “difficult” because of health problems.
“I had to say goodbye to everything and everyone because I might never come back,” he added.
“If this had gone the wrong way, my life as I know it in any sense would have been over,” he said.
British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has said he fears he will die in prison before he is acquitted of fraud charges relating to the sale of his software company. Dr Lynch, 59, was extradited to the United States for trial and faced up to 25 years in prison.
He said he had been under house arrest in San Francisco for 13 months while awaiting trial.
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Police agreed to meet him near his Chelsea home, but upon arrival at Heathrow Airport he was detained by US Marshals for an extradition flight.
He was accused of deliberately inflating the value of Autonomy, the company he founded in Cambridge in 1996 before it was bought by Hewlett-Packard.
A San Francisco jury found him not guilty of all 15 charges, including one count of conspiracy and 14 counts of wire fraud, each related to certain transactions and communications.
His team has always denied any wrongdoing, arguing that HP didn’t do enough due diligence and didn’t understand what it was buying.
Dr Lynch slammed the UK-US extradition treaty, which he criticised as one-sided, making it much easier for the US to extradite a British national than for the UK to extradite an American.
Dr. Lynch said he had been under house arrest in San Francisco for nearly 13 months while awaiting trial.
“It’s wrong that US prosecutors have more power over British nationals living in the UK than the UK police,” he said.
“This system has the potential to wipe out individuals.” Critics of the extradition treaty, signed after the 9/11 attacks with the apparent intention of catching terrorists and other serious criminals, say it instead has a disproportionate impact on British suspects of white-collar crimes.
Former Conservative shadow home secretary David Davis has backed calls for reform.
The father also spoke tearfully about the “very strange” adjustment to returning to the UK after the ordeal.
He told the paper: “I was standing in Piccadilly Circus the other day in the middle of the worst traffic jam and I just thought, ‘This is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen’.”
Dr Lynch previously served on the Prime Minister’s Scientific Group and was awarded an OBE for services to enterprise in 2006.
