(New York) British billionaire Joe Lewis, majority shareholder of London football club Tottenham, has been charged with insider trading in the United States, the attorney for the Southern District of New York announced on Tuesday.
The 86-year-old Bahamas-based businessman is accused of “orchestrating a brazen scheme” of insider trading, prosecutor Damian Williams said in a video posted to Twitter, renamed “X” by Elon Musk.
Between 2013 and 2021, Joe Lewis allegedly “abused his access to the boards” of various companies to provide information not available to the general public to his “romantic relationships, personal assistants, private pilots, and friends” .
These people would then act on the basis of this information and “rake in millions of dollars on the stock market”.
The 29-page indictment lists 19 charges against the businessman, including several for “stock market fraud”.
“Thanks to Lewis, those bets were guaranteed to be winners,” said Damian Williams.
According to the prosecutor, the billionaire would have provided this information as a way to compensate his employees or to offer gifts to friends or conquests, describing the scheme as “classic corporate corruption” and “cheating”.
Joe Lewis is considered one of the richest men in the UK, with an estimated fortune of over $6 billion according to Forbes, based on his trading activities (currency exchange) from the 1980s.
The billionaire is the owner of the Bahamian company Tavistock Group, whose subsidiary ENIC became a shareholder of Tottenham, a Premier League club, in 2001.
Asked by AFP, Tavistock Group was unable to respond immediately.