Joe Lewis faces JAIL TIME after being accused of insider training
Tottenham’s Joe Lewis faces jail time after being accused of insider training and surrendering to the FBI at 6.30am
- Lewis, 86, is accused of passing on information to friends and romantic partners
- The Tottenham man faces 19 charges including three counts of securities fraud
- However, he is pleading not guilty and robustly denies the charges against him
Joe Lewis could face prison after he appeared in court on Wednesday charged with ‘brazen’ insider trading.
On a day of drama in the US and London, the 86-year-old, head of the family who own Tottenham Hotspur, pleaded not guilty to a variety of charges after surrendering to the FBI and being read his rights at 6.30am.
Billionaire Lewis, who took control of the club in 2001, is accused of slipping confidential stock market tips to a girlfriend, his two private pilots and a poker associate.
He was freed on a $300million bond secured against his luxury yacht and private aircraft.
Lewis faces 19 charges including three counts of securities fraud — each of which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison. Thirteen of the charges carry a 20-year term. The alleged crimes are said to have taken place between 2013 and 2021, when Lewis was Spurs’ owner.
Tottenham owner Joe Lewis (above) was charged with insider trading by US authorities
Lewis (pictured next to Daniel Levy) pleaded not guilty to a variety of alleged offences
Lewis faces 19 charges including three counts of securities fraud — each of which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison
Although the situation pours more misery on Tottenham, who at least received some cheer on Wednesday when they beat Lion City Sailors 5-1 in Singapore, it is unlikely to have any immediate impact on the club.
Late last year, in a move officials privately played down at the time, Lewis handed over his personal shareholding to a newly-formed family trust and was removed as a person of significant control.
A conviction would see him in breach of the Premier League’s owners’ and directors’ test, but the move — which may have been pre-emptive — effectively renders the competition powerless.
Mail Sport understands, however, that potential buyers have signalled their doubts about continuing negotiations following the revelations. Tottenham have been engaged in talks in recent months over investment with Liberty Media, the owners of Formula One, who are also building a karting track under the club’s stadium, but those discussions will now be placed on hold.
Late on Tuesday, in a statement delivered by video, Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams accused Lewis of ‘orchestrating a brazen insider trading scheme’.
A 29-page indictment listed a variety of claims and alleged a pattern of behaviour in which Lewis used his status as investor in a number of companies to give him control of board seats which allowed him to glean confidential information which he then illegally passed on.
At one point, according to the indictment, he loaned his two private pilots $500,000 apiece to buy stock in a cancer-drug company that he knew had received — but not yet publicly disclosed — encouraging results from a clinical trial.
‘Boss is helping us out and told us to get ASAP,’ the pilot texted when advising a friend to buy the stock, too, according to the filing.
US attorney Damian Williams said Lewis has orchestrated a ‘brazen insider trading scheme’
Lewis is the silent owner of Tottenham with chairman Levy, right, the face of the club
In later texts telling the friend about the loan, the pilot reasoned that ‘the Boss has inside info’ and ‘knows the outcome’. ‘Otherwise why would he make us invest,’ the pilot added.
After the company announced the clinical trial data, the stock gained nearly 17 per cent in a day and Lewis’s friends and employees all eventually sold at a profit. The pilots repaid the loans, at Lewis’ request, according to the indictment. The two pilots, Patrick O’Connor and Bryan Waugh, have also been charged and have both pleaded not guilty.
Wearing a grey suit and dark blue tie, a smiling Lewis spoke only to enter his plea inside Court 5A. ‘Yes… not guilty, your honour,’ he said.
He was subsequently released on bond having already surrendered his passport. His travel, before he returns to court on September 5, will be restricted to Florida and a number of other states.
He is not permitted to travel internationally or on his yachts, and authorities have to be informed of the vessels’ movements. Lewis can only use his jet for approved business purposes.
Earlier, David M Zornow, an attorney for Lewis, revealed his client had already arrived in the US ‘to answer these ill-conceived charges’ and would fight them vigorously.
The north London club have been transformed off the pitch during ENIC’s tenure highlighted by their move into the £1billion Tottenham Hotspur Stadium back in 2019
WHO IS JOE LEWIS?
WHO IS JOE LEWIS?
Born in east London, Lewis is a billionaire businessman who took full control of Tottenham Hotspur in 2001 from Sir Alan (now Lord) Sugar. The 86-year-old is mainly based on a £113million yacht in the Bahamas and is worth around £5billion.
WHAT HAS HE BEEN CHARGED WITH?
A US district attorney alleges that Lewis is guilty of ‘brazen insider trading’.
The claims are that Lewis used his status as an investor in a number of companies to glean confidential information which he knew would affect the company’s share price.
He is alleged to have passed that information on to a number of associates who then traded stock before the information was made public.
After the share price rose, they then sold their stocks for vast profits.
WHAT HAS HE SAID?
Lewis’s legal representatives have said he will vigorously defend himself and he has pleaded not guilty in court. They also took a swipe at the US government, branding the charges ‘an egregious error in judgment’.
WHAT ARE THE LIKELY PUNISHMENTS?
There are 19 counts in total. The maximum sentence for three of the counts is 25 years in prison.
Others carry a 20-year term, and the penalty for some is five years.
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR TOTTENHAM?
Although it is not helpful, this should not impact on the club. Late last year, in a move some believe may have been pre-emptive, Lewis was effectively removed as a person in control of Tottenham. He had held more than 70 per cent of the shares in ENIC — the company that own Spurs.
But the club updated the company register to say: ‘A discretionary trust of which certain members of Mr J Lewis’s family are potential beneficiaries ultimately owns 70.12 per cent of the share capital of ENIC.’
There was tellingly zero fanfare or tribute to a man who had been in control since 2001 and the club briefed that little had changed. Tottenham have moved to distance themselves from the saga, stating: ‘This is a legal matter unconnected with the club.’ Officials are confident that there will be no impact.
WHY IS THIS HAPPENING IN NEW YORK?
The crimes Lewis has been accused of are alleged to have been committed on the US stock market.
‘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.
‘Mr Lewis has come to the US voluntarily to answer these ill-conceived charges, and we will defend him vigorously in court.’
In a statement released on Wednesday morning, Tottenham said: ‘This is a legal matter unconnected with the club and as such we have no comment.’
Separately on Wednesday, the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed a civil insider trading case against Lewis, O’Connor, Waugh and Lewis’ former girlfriend Carolyn Carter.
With a fortune that Forbes estimates at $6.1billion, Bahamas-based Lewis, who was born and raised in the East End, has investments that range from sport to real estate and energy to agriculture.
ENIC’s ownership has been criticised as Tottenham’s trophy drought stretches back to 2008
WHAT IS HE SUPPOSED TO HAVE DONE?
Most of the accusations against Joe Lewis concern allegedly passing on insider knowledge to his girlfriend and employees so they could make a profit on the stock market…
FEBRUARY 2019
On learning from two board members at the Australian Agricultural Company (AAC) — who were also employees of Lewis’s company Tavistock — that the firm were about to suffer major losses after a monsoon hit Queensland, Lewis advised his two private pilots to sell all of their AAC stock.
However, the pilots’ stockbroker was unable to dump their shares before the AAC went public with the news. ‘Just wish the Boss would have given us a little earlier heads up,’ one of the pilots lamented to the broker by email.
JULY 2019
As a significant shareholder in biotech company Solid Biosciences, Lewis learnt confidential information about a $60million cash injection they were about to receive through private investment.
Lewis was staying at the Four Seasons in Seoul with his girlfriend when he received the intelligence — before it was public knowledge — and he urged her to purchase Solid stock. The next day, on a flight from Seoul to Massachusetts, he advised his two pilots to do the same.
SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2019
Lewis is one of the largest shareholders in Mirati Therapeutics, a cancer treatment company. A Mirati board member, while visiting Lewis on his yacht when it was docked in California, received confidential updates about a clinical trial the firm had been conducting.
The results were positive and therefore likely to boost Mirati’s share price, and Lewis told his girlfriend to purchase stock in the company. The next month, Lewis loaned each of his private pilots $500,000 so they too could purchase additional Mirati stock.
FEBRUARY- APRIL 2021
An acquisition company owned by Lewis, BCTG, entered negotiations over a merger with life sciences company Tango Therapeutics in July 2020. The following February, while the deal was progressing, Lewis told his two private pilots to invest in BCTG, before advising two of his personal assistants who were working on his yacht to follow suit in April. Later that month, BCTG’s share price rose 14.5 per cent.
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