Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

Frankly I don't think anyone should be extradited to the USA. I just have zero confidence in the US legal system.

Prosecutions seem politically motivated. Punishments are unreasonably harsh (I suspect to drive plea deals over actual trials). The quality of your defence depends entirely on how much you have to spend. And there seems to be a weird bias making prosecution and conviction of foreigners more likely for no reason beyond them being foreign. The US also seems to like extradition for people who's crimes didn't even happen in America.

This case seems very much to fit that last criteria. If the deal was subject to British law, why isn't any accusation of fraud?

It doesn't help that our (I'm a brit) extradition agreement with the US seems filled with its own issues (extradition requires no evidence and doesn't seem to allow the usual defences). That's without getting into the humanity of us prison system.

Edit: Being down voted on HN is really annoying because it won't let you reply if your down voted. Even to replies to your comment. Thanks for your comments, I'll try and reply tomorrow!

Yeah, that is true. Maybe he'll get off despite being guilty? :)

As far as I can tell US prisons (in generally, not necessary all but I think most) are basically a heap of human right violations.

In that context I think extraditing anyone to the US should be treated as a human right violation and as such should not be done.

And even if we ignore their prisons from a German Law POV a lot of their law is fundamentally in conflict with the values represented by the constitution and might also be in conflict with the human right charter, which at least for Germany (and potentially other countries, too) is another reason why extradition to the US should not be allowed.

> But Dr Lynch has argued that HP used the allegations to cover up its own mismanagement of Autonomy after the 2011 deal.

I have no comment to make on Mike Lynch's guilt or innocence in this matter, because I simply don't know enough about him or about Autonomy (despite working in an office just across the road for 3 years leading up to the sale)[0], but tough to argue that HP wasn't mismanaged during this period, and therefore tough to assert that this mismanagement wouldn't have extended to Autonomy. Could this have made HP easier to dupe, or did they not get duped and just do a bad job? It's going to be weird if the outcomes of the civil and criminal cases end up disagreeing on this point.

And I think whatever the outcome, it reflects badly on HP: if he's not guilty then it adds weight to his assertion about mismanagement, and if he is guilty then it means they were duped during DD (and may in addition have mismanaged Autonomy). Neither of these is a good look.

[0] I do know a handful of people who have worked with and for Mike Lynch: some of them really rated him, some really don't. It's about what you'd expect for a prominent business executive. As I say, I have no basis on which to form any kind of opinion of him.

"Prosecutions seem politically motivated."

Maybe because in the US prosecutors are elected / directly appointed by politicians, whereas in Europe they are in generally part of a self-selecting career bureaucracy.