Lawyers for the British billionaire Joe Lewis have accused prosecutors of making an “egregious” mistake, as the 86-year-old pleaded not guilty to multiple counts of securities fraud and conspiracy.
Lewis, who heads the family that owns Tottenham Hotspur FC, was arraigned on Tuesday in Manhattan federal court with 16 counts of securities fraud and three of conspiracy to commit fraud, which prosecutors called a “brazen” insider trading scheme to enrich his friends, lovers and employees, including two private jet pilots.
Asked to enter a plea to the charges by magistrate judge Valerie Figueredo, Lewis responded: “Not guilty, your honour.”
Lewis was arrested by the FBI at 6.30am, prosecutors said. In court he was flanked by three attorneys. Lewis offered no comment as he left the 20-minute arraignment hearing.
Under the terms of a $300m bond to secure his release, Lewis agreed to surrender his private yacht Aviva, which he is now prohibited from boarding, and his personal plane, which can be used – with prior notification to prosecutors – for domestic US travel.
Lewis was ordered to surrender his passport, barred from international travel, and will be restricted to New York, northern Georgia, where he owns a home, and Florida. He was also ordered to have no contact with three government witnesses, believed to be his personal assistants.
Co-defendants Patrick O’Connor and Bryan “Marty” Waugh, both pilots of his private plane, also pleaded not guilty at the hearing. They were released on a $250,000 bond. All three men were ordered to surrender any firearms. The defendants are due back in court on 5 September.
In a statement released Monday, US attorney for the southern district of New York, Damian Williams, said Lewis had “abused his access to corporate boardrooms” in order to provide confidential information to people who used his tips to make millions of dollars betting on the stock market.
“Thanks to Lewis, those bets were a sure thing,” said Williams.
Buying or selling shares in listed companies using information that has not yet been disclosed to the markets is illegal in the US and every major economy.
Williams said Lewis, who appeared in court on Wednesday, had knowingly deployed the tactic “as a way to compensate his employees or to shower gifts on his friends and lovers”.
Lewis entered a not guilty plea before US magistrate judge Valerie Figueredo in Manhattan federal court on Wednesday.
The US markets regulator, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), also filed civil insider trading charges against Lewis, pilots Patrick O’Connor, 66, and Bryan Waugh, 64, as well as against Lewis’s girlfriend, Carolyn Carter, 33.
In a 29-page indictment, detailing three counts of conspiracy and 16 counts of securities fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years, the US attorney cited evidence including WhatsApps and emails.
In one such message, O’Connor told a friend that “the boss has inside info” after the billionaire allegedly lent him and Waugh $500,000 each to invest in the cancer treatment company Mirati Therapeutics.
Lewis was one of Mirati’s largest shareholders and had allegedly received information about a positive clinical trial that would cause the company’s share price to rise. Carter and the two pilots invested $3m collectively in Mirati as a result of information supplied by Lewis, the SEC said, making a combined profit of $373,000.
The US attorney cited four companies in which Lewis was an investor, via a hedge fund he controlled or through his vast investment firm, Tavistock Group.
Lewis allegedly used information passed to him by insiders at those companies, including board members who he had been able to install thanks to his sizeable shareholdings.
He is accused of passing that information on to girlfriends, friends and employees, in some cases encouraging them to make stock market trades before the information was publicly disclosed. Carter is alleged to have made more than $849,000 in less than a month, after acting on a tip from Lewis about a company called Solid Biosciences.
Williams said: “That’s classic corporate corruption. It’s cheating and it’s against the law.”
But on Wednesday, lawyers for Lewis said that he denied the charges and would contest them.
“The government has made an egregious error in judgment in charging Mr Lewis, an 86-year-old man of impeccable integrity and prodigious accomplishment,” said David M Zornow of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher and Flom.
“Mr Lewis has come to the US voluntarily to answer these ill-conceived charges, and we will defend him vigorously in court.”
Lewis, who was born above a pub in the East End of London, made his fortune from currency trading, before investing in sectors from pubs and tourism to biosciences. He is now worth $6.55bn (£5bn), according to Bloomberg.
Lewis took control of Tottenham in the 1990s, but on Wednesday sources close to the club indicated that he no longer owned it, after a reorganisation of the Lewis family assets late last year.
The beneficiaries of the trust that own Enic group, which in turn owns the majority of Tottenham, are understood to be members of the Lewis family but not the billionaire himself.
Lewis’s wealth is tied to Tavistock, a Bahamas-based holding company that controls stakes in more than 200 businesses in 13 countries, with investments in real estate, restaurants and resorts.
He also owns a 27% stake in the pub and restaurant chain Mitchells & Butlers, which owns chains including All Bar One, Harvester and O’Neills and is valued on the London Stock Exchange at £1.2bn.
Lewis spends much of his time in the Bahamas, or aboard his 95-metre yacht, the Aviva. He is seldom spotted in the UK and is not thought to have attended a Tottenham Hotspur match since March 2022.
