Former Finance boss, Sushovan Hussain has been sentenced to five years in prison for fraud. Mr. Hussain who is a British citizen faces jail in the US after being found guilty of multiple counts of securities and wire fraud.
This case was linked to the 11-billion-dollar sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard. One year after acquiring Autonomy, HP wrote down the value of the firm by 8.8 billion dollars due to “serious accounting improprieties”.
In addition to his jail term, Mr. Hussain was also fined $4m and would pay an additional $6.1m in forfeiture.
HP believes that Autonomy gave a false account of its revenues and a court found that Mr. Hussain made false statement to investors about the company before the deal in 2011.
The judge presiding over the case, Charles Breyer said that in his position as CFO of Autonomy, Mr. Sushovan Hussain had “corrupted a number of innocent people” and “could direct people who were subordinates to [him] to commit these types of offences.”
The sentencing took place in a San Francisco court on Monday. Mr. Hussain said after the sentencing on Monday that his family has “suffered so much but been unwavering in support.” He apologized for all the “pain and suffering” that he ha caused them and hopes that he can be “worthy of their compassion again”.
Mr. Hussain’s lawyers stated that they would appeal against the court’s decision.
Mr. Hussain also has other legal battles to face in his home country. He, along with his former employer and founder of Autonomy, Mike Lynch are being sued in the UK by HP for 5 billion dollars over claims that that they “committed a deliberate fraud over a sustained period of time” in order to increase he firms value.
Mr. Hussain and Mr. Lynch have both denied these claims. However, the drama that e=is ensuing from this HP-Autonomy issue is far from over. Recently Mr. Lynch filed a counter suit against Hp for at least 125 million dollars. He claims that HP has made “a series of false, misleading and unfair public statements”.