By Brandon Drenon in Washington DC & Antoinette Radford in London
BBC News
UK billionaire Joe Lewis, whose family trust owns Tottenham Hotspur football club, has pleaded not guilty to insider trading charges in a Manhattan court.
He was granted $300m (£230m) bail. New York prosecutors allege he hatched a “brazen” scheme that enriched his friends.
He allegedly supplied confidential information that allowed them to profit from buying or selling related stocks.
The court granted two co-accused, Mr Lewis’ pilots, bail of $250,000.
His lawyer David Zornow earlier said charging the tycoon was an “egregious error”.
He added that the charges would be “defended vigorously in court”, and that the 86-year-old had come to the US voluntarily to defend himself against the “ill-conceived charges”.
He usually resides in the Bahamas, but surrendered on Wednesday to federal authorities in the US.
In a statement, a Tottenham Hotspur spokesperson said the charges facing Mr Lewis had no bearing on the club: “This is a legal matter unconnected with the club and as such we have no comment.”
It’s been noted that last October the club made a filing to Companies House confirming that Lewis was – the club said – “no longer a person with significant control at the club”.
Mr Lewis was charged with 16 counts of security fraud, and three counts of conspiracy for crimes alleged to have taken place between 2013 to 2021, according to the 29-page indictment.
Allegations against Mr Lewis were laid out in a video statement posted to the US State Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.
“We allege that, for years, Joe Lewis abused his access to corporate board rooms and repeatedly provided inside information to his romantic partners, his personal assistants, his private pilots, and his friends,” US attorney Damian Williams said in the video.
Mr Williams, the chief federal law enforcement officer for the SDNY, alleged that Mr Lewis’s acquaintances used that information to make millions of dollars in the stock market.
“Thanks to [Mr] Lewis, those bets were a sure thing,” he claimed. “None of this was necessary. Joe Lewis is a wealthy man”, he added.
The indictment quoted one pilot texting a friend that “Boss lent Marty and I $500,000 each for this,” and that he thought “the Boss has inside info” because “otherwise why would he make us invest”.
It listed several occasions on which Mr Lewis allegedly told his pilots to sell or invest in shares on the stock exchange, after he received confidential information.
The indictment also alleges that Mr Lewis told a girlfriend to invest in a biotech company in July 2019, before the results of its clinical trial were made public.
After speaking to his girlfriend, he allegedly logged into her bank account himself and used almost all of her available funds to invest into the company – amounting to $700,000. She then sold the shares for a profit of $849,000, say prosecutors.
The indictment listed many other alleged incidents of Mr Lewis telling friends, girlfriends and employees to invest in stocks based on insider information.
Insider trading is the illegal practice of using confidential information to trade on the stock exchange to one’s advantage.
Mr Lewis is reported to be one of Britain’s richest men. According to the indictment he has a 98-metre superyacht that at times is his primary residence.
He also owns a stake in UK pub chain Mitchells & Butlers. He was ranked 39th in the 2023 Sunday Times Rich List, with an estimated worth of more than £5bn.
