Cleared UK tech tycoon feared he would die in US prison if convicted

The British tech tycoon Mike Lynch has said he thought he would die in a US jail if he had not been cleared of allegedly defrauding Hewlett-Packard over a multibillion-dollar business deal.

- Mark Sweney

In his first interview since his acquittal last month on charges related to the $11.1bn (£8.6bn) purchase of his company Autonomy in 2011, the man once lauded as the UK's answer to Bill Gates said that his lung condition meant he doubted he would have survived a prison term.

He had been accused of duping the US technology company into overpaying for the software firm he founded. HP subsequently took an $8.8bn writedown of Autonomy's entire value 15 months after the deal was first disclosed, alleging it had discovered "serious accounting improprieties" and blaming Lynch for perpetrating a $5bn fraud, an accusation he denied.

The 59-year-old billionaire was cleared by a Californian court on 6 June of all 15 counts of fraud, which meant he avoided facing up to 25 years in a US prison.