UK billionaire Joe Lewis, owner of Tottenham football club, charged in US with insider trading
- US prosecutors said Joe Lewis ‘used insider information as a way to compensate his employees and shower gifts on his friends and lovers’
- A lawyer for the Tottenham club owner called the charges ‘ill-conceived’ and that they would be fought vigorously
British billionaire and Tottenham soccer team owner Joe Lewis has been indicted on charges of slipping confidential stock tips to his romantic partners, private pilots and other associates, US prosecutors said on Tuesday.
Lewis exploited his entrée to various corporations to reap lucrative secrets, passed them on to people in his own inner circle and prompted them to trade on the knowledge, prosecutors said. They said the stock transactions made millions of dollars for Lewis and his cronies.
“As we allege, he used insider information as a way to compensate his employees and shower gifts on his friends and lovers,” Manhattan-based US attorney Damian Williams said in a Twitter video announcing the insider trading case. “It’s cheating, and it’s against the law.”
David M. Zornow, a lawyer for Lewis, said his client had come to the US “to answer these ill-conceived charges” and would fight them vigorously.
“The government has made an egregious error in judgment in charging Mr Lewis, an 86-year-old man of impeccable integrity and prodigious accomplishment,” Zornow said in a statement. The charges include securities fraud and conspiracy.
