Tottenham soccer team owner Joe Lewis charged with insider trading in U.S.

NEW YORK (AP) — British billionaire and Tottenham soccer crew proprietor Joe Lewis has been indicted on prices of slipping confidential inventory tricks to his romantic companions, personal pilots and different friends, U.S. prosecutors stated Tuesday. 

Lewis exploited his entrée to numerous companies to reap profitable secrets and techniques, handed them on to folks in his personal internal circle and prompted them to commerce on the data, prosecutors stated. They stated the inventory transactions made tens of 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 U.S. legal professional Damian Williams stated in a Twitter video saying the insider buying and selling case. “It’s cheating, and it’s against the law.” 

David M. Zornow, an legal professional for Lewis, stated his consumer had come to the U.S. “to answer these ill-conceived charges” and would struggle 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 stated in a press release. The prices embody securities fraud and conspiracy.

With a fortune that Forbes estimates at $6.1 billion, Lewis has investments that span from actual property to biotechnology, power to agriculture — and, in fact, sports activities. He purchased Tottenham, one in every of England’s most storied soccer golf equipment, in 2001. 

Lewis’ Tavistock Group has stakes in additional than 200 corporations all over the world, in response to its web site, and his artwork assortment boasts works by Picasso, Matisse, Degas and extra. His business connections embody Tiger Woods, Ernie Els and Justin Timberlake, with whom he constructed a Bahamian oceanside resort that opened in 2010.

According to the indictment, Lewis’ investments in varied corporations gave him management of board seats, the place he positioned associates who let him know what they discovered behind the scenes. Prosecutors say Lewis improperly doled out that confidential data between 2019 and 2021 to his chosen recipients and urged them to revenue on it.

At one level, in response to the indictment, he even loaned his two personal pilots $500,000 apiece to purchase inventory in a cancer-drug firm that he knew had gotten — however not but publicly disclosed — encouraging outcomes from a medical trial. 

“Boss is helping us out and told us to get ASAP,” the pilot texted when advising a good friend to purchase the inventory, too, in response to the submitting. In later texts telling the good friend in regards to the mortgage, the pilot reasoned that “the Boss has inside info” and “knows the outcome.”

“Otherwise why would he make us invest,” the pilot added.

Lewis additionally gave the tip to his girlfriend, his private assistant, a poker buddy and a good friend with whom he had a romance, the indictment stated. After the corporate introduced the medical trial knowledge, the inventory gained almost 17% in a day, and Lewis’ pals and workers all ultimately offered at a revenue. The pilots repaid the loans, at Lewis’ request, in response to the indictment. 

Another time, in response to the submitting, Lewis gleaned some closed-door details about a muscular dystrophy drug firm by which he was a serious investor. The data allegedly included a deliberate monetary transfer and a few medical trial news.

Lewis’ biotech hedge fund signed a confidentiality settlement that prohibited disclosing the data or buying and selling on it. But, the indictment stated, he advised his girlfriend to purchase the corporate’s inventory, then advised the pilots the identical as they flew the couple to Massachusetts from Seoul, the place the 2 had been staying within the swanky Four Seasons Hotel.

The inventory value shot up after the medical trial outcomes and the monetary transfer had been introduced, and the girlfriend greater than doubled her cash, netting about $850,000, in response to the indictment. 

Yet one other inventory tip involved a 3rd pharmaceutical firm, which Lewis was negotiating to amass, the indictment stated. It stated Lewis suggested his pilots and two private assistants, who had been engaged on his 98-meter (322-foot) mega-yacht, to purchase in. And they did, earlier than the merger plan grew to become public and bumped up the inventory value.

On nonetheless one other event, the indictment stated, Lewis discovered via a hand-picked board member that an Australian agricultural agency was bracing for vital losses from a monsoon flood. He shortly urged the pilots to promote, in response to the indictment, however their dealer wasn’t capable of dump the shares earlier than the corporate went public with the news.

“Just wish the Boss would have given us a little earlier heads up,” one of many pilots lamented to the dealer by e-mail. 

The indictment doesn’t point out Tottenham, one in every of Lewis’ most seen investments. 

Under his possession, the Premier League membership has constructed a state-of-the-art stadium at an estimated value of greater than $1 billion. It options an NFL area under the moveable soccer pitch, as Tottenham has a long-term settlement with the NFL to stage regular-season video games in London.

The membership’s most celebrated present participant is England captain Harry Kane, although he’ll grow to be a free agent on the finish of the season. 

But the London crew, based in 1882 and nicknamed Spurs — after its full identify, Tottenham Hotspur — has discovered trophies onerous to come back by. Its final piece of silverware was the English League Cup in 2008, though it did advance to the Champions League remaining — European membership soccer’s most prestigious match — in 2019. Liverpool received.

Fans have grow to be more and more annoyed by Spurs’ lack of success and excessive coach turnover. Much of the anger has been directed at membership chairman Daniel Levy.

Spurs additionally was amongst groups concerned in 2021 within the aborted plan for a European Super League, which prompted widespread protests from supporters.

A message searching for remark was despatched to the crew, which is on tour in Singapore.