Joe Lewis at a Tottenham vs. Arsenal soccer match in north London in 2011.
Matthew Ashton|Corbis Sport|Getty Images
Joe Lewis, a British billionaire and the owner of the Tottenham Hotspur soccer group, has actually been charged in the U.S. with participation in expert trading, a federal district attorney revealed Tuesday.
The Southern District of New York arraigned Lewis, declaring the 86- year-old business owner schemed for many years to abuse his access to business conference rooms “and repeatedly provided inside information to his romantic partners, his personal assistants, his private pilots and his friends,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams stated in a video statement, including that Lewis managed “a brazen insider trading scheme.”
“Joe Lewis is a wealthy man, but as we allege, he used insider information as a way to compensate his employees or to shower gifts on his friends and lovers,” Williams stated. “That’s classic corporate corruption. It’s cheating and it’s against the law, laws that apply to everyone no matter who you are.”
Lewis’ attorney, David M. Zornow, stated the federal government made “an egregious error in judgment” with the charges, calling Lewis a guy of “impeccable integrity and prodigious accomplishment.”
“Mr. Lewis has come to the US voluntarily to answer these ill-conceived charges, and we will defend him vigorously in court,” Zornow stated in a declaration.
The United Kingdom and the U.S. have a bilateral extradition relationship under a treaty checked in 2003 that strengthens each nation’s authority to extradite individuals considered major wrongdoers who are desired in connection with a range of criminal activities.
Lewis’ net worth is $6.1 billion, according to a Forbes price quote. He established the personal financial investment company Tavistock Group and ended up being a bulk owner of London- based Tottenham more than 20 years back after Alan Sugar offered his bulk stake in the group for the equivalent of about $50 million today.
Forbes’ yearly rankings state the group is the ninth most important soccer club on the planet, worth $2.8 billion.
NBC News has actually connected to Tavistock and Tottenham for discuss Lewis’ indictment.
