Mike Lynch, the British software tycoon behind Autonomy, has been detained in the US to face multi-billion dollar fraud charges after flying into San Francisco.
Mr Lynch boarded a flight to California on Thursday to appear in front of a judge, ending a multi-year battle against being extradited from the UK.
He remained in custody on Friday morning after the judge declared him a “serious” flight risk, setting a $100m (£80m) bail and requiring Mr Lynch to pay for armed security and video surveillance while under house arrest.
District Judge Charles Breyer said that Mr Lynch’s “vast wealth” of between $400m and $450m, along with his lengthy fight against extradition, meant he “presents a serious and substantial risk of flight”.
“There is nothing keeping him here, beyond the charges he faces in this Court,” Mr Breyer wrote.
Mr Lynch faces 17 charges over the $11bn sale of the former FTSE 100 software company Autonomy to Hewlett Packard in 2011. If found guilty, he could face decades in prison.
HP wrote down almost all the value of the acquisition in 2012, claiming that Mr Lynch, who made $804m from the deal, had grossly inflated the company’s value along with other Autonomy executives.
Mr Lynch has denied the allegations, claiming that HP mismanaged the company. He was first charged in 2018 and has been battling extradition since 2019.
Last month he lost an appeal seeking to block his extradition after former home secretary Priti Patel approved his transfer to the US in early 2022. He had suggested he could appeal the ruling to the European Court of Human Rights.
Mr Lynch arrived in San Francisco and attended his hearing escorted by the US Marshalls Service.
Mr Breyer wrote that “flight from prosecution appears to this court to be almost a certainty” but said there were restrictions that could be expected to ensure his presence at trial.
This included a $100m bail bond, secured with $50m in cash or assets such as shares, confinement to an address in San Francisco, and 24-hour protection by armed guards and video surveillance, and surrendering his passport.
Autonomy’s former finance director Stephen Chamberlain has been charged alongside Mr Lynch and pleaded not guilty. The tech company’s former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain was sentenced to five years in prison in 2019.