Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

bbc.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 208 posts

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#181

Post by catmanjan »

crawdog wrote: post #179

What a fascinating time for search companies. We saw 2 companies with huge accounting irregularities purchased by large enterprise software vendors. The story behind Fast's acquisition by Microsoft is just as crazy. It was called the "Enron of Norway" https://techcrunch.com/2008/07/03/did-the-enron-of-norway-pu... , and happened just 3 years prior! Autonomy acquired Verity, they were the largest enterprise search com…

Isn't it ironic that IDOL (one of autonomys big products) is now being pitched to do fraud detection!

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#182

Post by harry8 »

Hugely suspicious of this just a face value.

HP are big enough to hire anyone they like to do due-dilligence. Where is the negligence claim on who they did hire?

This was a listed company with audited financial statements. Where is the action against the auditors?

Americans generally hate hearing it but their courts a bit notorious for home-town decisions.

Anyway aside from that as Matt Levine is fond of telling us "Everything in the US is securities fraud." HP class action to follow. "The company management should have known it wasn't competent to do an acquisition and could be the victim of fraud to the tune of billions." I'll never get my head around an owner of the company joining the other owners of the company suing the company to be paid by the owners of the company.

edit: Never at all surprised to hear about financial dealings in the UK being potentially crooked.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#183

Post by trhway »

>Dr Lynch said no defence witnesses turned up to Mr Hussain's trial because they were told they would be arrested if they entered the US.

and i guess some of his witnesses would be facing the same. A fair trial so to speak.

It is pretty telling that HP and US would like to have the guy prosecuted in US instead of UK - i mean i'm pretty sure that the alleged fraudulent inflation of the company valuation is a crime in UK too, and as it was supposedly committed in UK, it would be only natural to prosecute it in UK, yet they want to do it in US.

No worries though - i'm pretty sure that the guy flies a lot, and it is only a matter of time before US Marshals divert his plane into US airspace and the justice gets served cold.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#184

Post by trasz »

pkaye wrote: post #157
trasz wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing not, as the general rule is that US doesn’t extradite it’s citizens.

The US does extradite to other countries depending on treaties. Recently there was two to Japan. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/13/business/carlos-ghosn-esc...

Very, very rarely. I’m guessing in this case extradition was deeply profitable to US for some reason.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#185

Post by harry8 »

dheera wrote: post #170
bhelkey wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "We are going after a 100 billion dollar market" IANAL - That doesn't sound like fraud to me. A highschool athlete saying 'they are going after attending the Olympics' isn't lying. A highschool athlete without Olympic experience saying 'they won a gold medal at the Olympics is lying.

The difference is that athlete actually has a plan to at least try for the Olympics, and could conceivably get to the goal. The 100 billion dollar market will never be conquered by one company, and the pain point they are trying to solve often only applies to 1%-10% of that market and they know that, or they're BSing themselves.

Nah that's just like "your opinion, man" regardless of how realistic it is. That isn't fraud.

Saying something that happened or that exists that is also an untrue statement is required for it to go from opinion to fraud. Support your opinion with falsehoods to get a sale. Fraud? Talk about goals of being a trillion dollar revenue lemonade stand? Go nuts.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#186

Post by trasz »

rhino369 wrote: post #175
trasz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You’re talking about Anne Sacoolas. There’s more to it: she’s a spook, and she fled on board of US military plane, lying about having diplomatic immunity.

She had diplomatic immunity. There is a lot of bad reporting in that case. The US always puts it diplomats back on a plane ASAP after that sort of incident. My buddy in the foreign service ran someone over while on a tour and they did exactly the same thing. Back on the next flight out. It sounds callous, but the person would otherwise become a scapegoat for the US.

Indeed, the US tends to protect its criminals from justice, as long as they work for the government. It’s not callous, though, it’s just bullying. The “scapegoat” argument could make sense in a few countries without proper judicial system, but obviously doesn’t make sense with European countries.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#187

Post by trasz »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #167
bagacrap wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what is the point of diplomatic immunity? surely it's not intended to grant the right to murder/manslaughter

That’s exactly the point since otherwise there would be more opportunities for false flag attacks on, or by, diplomats overriding a non absolute immunity.

That might the point for some third world countries, and the US, which openly protect their criminals (usually war criminals) from justice.

With more civilized countries, the idea is that the person accused is still being tried, but in its country court, with the assumption that if they are guilty, they will get sentenced anyways.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#188

Post by trhway »

Ostrogodsky wrote: post #146
Spooky23 wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The opposite is true as well. A US person can be federally charged for violating a foreign law while overseas. The example used when I read of this was a guy convicted for wrapping lobsters for shipment in Nicaragua in wax paper instead of a bag (or something along those lines). It was very strange because the violation in Nicaragua was a misdemeanor, but the US law for committing a crime is a felony.

Maybe I am getting this wrong but that is not the opposite. I think OP said: An UK citizen can be extradicted from the UK to the US just by having done a thing that it is illegal in the US but not in the UK. You said: An US citizen can be charged in the US if he committed a crime abroad even if that thing is not typified as illegal in the US. Wake me up when an US citizen is extradicted to the UK because he did somet…

>Wake me up when an US citizen is extradicted to the UK because he did something perfectly legal in Washington but which is considered a crime in London.

If it were the case, I suppose tens of millions of US people could be extradited that way given the differences in free speech laws - a lot of what is said in US is probably a crime [IANAL] in UK :)

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#189

Post by trasz »

pkaye wrote: post #158
mjw1007 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There have been cases of US citizens literally shooting and killing Mexican children over the border, and extradition was refused. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hernandez_v._Mesa

That is because the shooter was a border patrol agent and they get qualified immunity.

Again, this is something that only happens one way: if any other country was arbitrarily claiming immunity for their agent who murdered someone in the US, like the US did here, the US would carpet bomb them.

The morally correct way would be probably to go full Mossad and either kidnap, or disappear the perpetrator, but that can’t happen for political reasons. Same reason why Blackwater terrorists avoid consequences.

Re: Autonomy founder Mike Lynch can be extradited to US

#190

Post by bloqs »

_2d30 wrote: post #132
dathinab wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Prisons are NOT meant to take away your human rights, they will take away some of your rights temporary but that's not the same. The main point of prisons is to temporary take away your freedom (which is often perceived as on of the most valuable rights) as a form of punishment for you crime, but that's where it stops. You are sentenced to 10 years of prison not 10 years of torture, and potential random death. If you…

> Prisons are NOT meant to take away your human rights > The main point of prisons is to temporary take away your freedom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doublespeak

Inalienable human rights and the rights of a citizen are distinctly different things.
Post reply on HN