Lynch was charged with conspiring to artificially drive up the company’s value to get more money from HP in a transaction that earned him about US$815 million from the 2011 sale.

Bloomberg reported Lynch was wiping his eyes after the verdict and that people in the courtroom were crying.

The verdict came after two days of deliberations and 11 weeks of a highly technical trial that included testimony by Lynch himself.

Just one year after the mega-deal, HP reported a write-down of US$8.8 billion — including more than US$5 billion it attributed to inflated data from Autonomy.

The Autonomy takeover led to the ouster of Leo Apotheker as HP chief executive in September 2011, and HP subsequently said it had discovered massive accounting irregularities.

Lynch, who served as an adviser to two British prime ministers, has claimed HP is making him a scapegoat for the company’s failures when it came to acquisitions.

HP won a civil fraud case in Britain over the sale, with a High Court judge ruling in 2022 that it had been duped into overpaying.

HP sued two executives, Lynch and former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain, for around US$5 billion.

A US court in 2018 convicted Hussain of fraud related to the sale and jailed him for five years.

Lynch, from Suffolk in eastern England, disputed all charges and denied any wrongdoing.

US prosecutors accused Lynch of wire fraud and securities fraud, and conspiracy to commit offenses involving years of falsified records.

Lynch was extradited to the US from Britain to stand trial on the criminal charges, which could have put him in prison for as long as 25 years.

His legal jeopardy was diminished last week when the judge dismissed the most serious charge of securities fraud.