More drama than a boxset
Saturday, August 24, 2024
This week, I’ve been somewhat fascinated by the tragic ongoing international news story of Mike Lynch, whose ‘Bayesian’ superyacht sank off the coast of Italy on Monday. Sadly, his body, along with those of several other passengers and crew, was pulled from the wreckage by divers on Thursday.
Lynch was the founder of Autonomy, a data software company that was sold to HP in 2011 for $11 billion. A year later, after Lynch had left as CEO, HP wrote off $8.8 billion from the value of Autonomy, based on what it claims were ‘serious accounting improprieties’. Lynch counterclaimed the company was being badly run by HP, hence its drop in revenues. A UK civil lawsuit followed in 2019, with Lynch and Autonomy’s former CFO, Sushovan Hussain, being found guilty of artificially inflating the company’s figures. Hussain was imprisoned in the US in 2019 for fraud, but in June this year, Lynch was acquitted in a US trial for the same matter.
In a strange coincidence, one of Lynch’s co-defendants in the US case, Stephen Chamberlain, who was a member of the team that oversaw Autonomy’s sale to HP, was knocked over in a traffic accident, at the weekend, while out jogging in the UK. He died in hospital on Monday. Local police say there was nothing ‘untoward’ about the incident. The Guardian reports that Lynch paid Chamberlain’s legal fees in the US case.
In 2013, presumably with some of his HP payout, Lynch had been the founding investor for cybersecurity company Darktrace, and had brought in Chamberlain to assist with running the company in 2016. Private equity firm Thoma Bravo bought Darktrace earlier this year, with the deal still set to finalise soon. Lynch was due to be paid out around $400 million.
Closer to home there have also been a couple of stories that caught my eye this week. The first was when former Accountant-General and former SITA boss, now NSFAS administrator, Freeman Nomvalo told Parliament that the student finance body didn’t have credible student data and was vulnerable to cyber attacks. Nomvalo told the Portfolio Committee on Higher Education and Training that more work was needed to improve NSFAS’ ICT systems and cyber defences. Questions were also raised about where funds from National Treasury to be used to improve the ICT had gone, with a forensic audit on the cards.
The other story is a courtroom drama, set to play out in the week ahead. This time it’s Turkcell pleading its case to the Supreme Court of Appeal in Bloemfontein over allegations MTN paid off Iranian and South African officials to secure a mobile licence in Iran. This comes after the High Court dismissed the $4.2 billion case in late 2022. Of the coming case, MTN says it trusts in the legal processes. Turkcell says if it doesn’t get the decision it wants then not only will ‘MTN have gotten away with it’ but “South Africa will become a haven for international bribery of foreign governments because companies and individuals engaged in such bribery and corruption will become ‘untouchable’.” There has, of course, been a largely ineffective follow up to the Zondo Commission on State Capture, with a tiny number of arrests and prosecutions, but still, sjoe, remind me not to annoy Tuckcell's lawyers.
In recent weeks, I’ve been trying to finish season 2 of US TV series 24, with its tales of terrorism and deep state conspiracies, but it seems there’s more drama and intrigue just following the news.
Until next time…
Adrian Hinchcliffe
PS if you want to stay up to date, why not sign up to our daily eNews and get it delivered directly into your inbox.
领英推荐
TOP HEADLINES