Joe Lewis, the billionaire real estate investor and owner of Tottenham Hotspur football club, has been charged over multiple alleged instances of insider trading, US prosecutors said on Tuesday. The 86-year-old, who is one of Britain’s richest men, is accused of tipping off employees, associates, friends and romantic interests with non-public information about companies in which he had invested, and lending some of them hundreds of thousands of dollars to trade on the knowledge. He has been charged with 19 counts, including securities fraud and conspiracy to commit securities fraud and make false statements. According to the indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court on Tuesday, Lewis and his associates were collectively able to make millions of dollars using the stolen information, which included favourable results from clinical trials.
Allegations against Mr Lewis were laid out in a video statement posted to Mr Williams' Twitter. A formal written statement, known as an indictment, is yet to be released.
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," Mr 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.
In 2019 indictment says Lewis's girlfriend bought $700,000 of shares in Solid Biosciences after he told her about the results of a clinical trial.
In the same year Lewis is accused of advising two of his pilots to sell their shares in Australian Agricultural Co. because of flooding in Queensland. In an email to a stockbroker, one of the pilots is said to have written: "Just wish the Boss would have given us a little earlier heads up".
Indictment says in October 2019 Lewis lent two of his pilots $1m to buy Mirati shares. The share price went up 16.7 per cent soon after when it announced the results of a clinical trial. The indictment says one of the pilots texted a friend: "Boss lent Marty and I $500,000 for this".
The billionaire is charged with 16 counts of securities fraud and three counts of conspiracy, Reuters reports.
The businessman owns the Tavistock Group, which owns more than 200 assets across 13 countries, including Tottenham Hotspur and UK pub operator Mitchells & Butlers, according to Sky News.
Mr Lewis, 86, is worth an estimated $6.1bn and lives in the Bahamas, according to Forbes.
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