Joe Lewis, the owner of soccer club Tottenham Hotspur, has been charged with insider trading in the United States, authorities said Tuesday. The 86-year-old billionaire was accused by federal prosecutors of orchestrating a “brazen” scheme over eight years, abusing his access to corporate boardrooms and “repeatedly” providing insider information to employees, friends, and romantic partners.
“Those folks then traded on that inside information and made millions of dollars in the stock market, because thanks to Lewis, those bets were a sure thing,” said Damian Williams, the U.S. district attorney for the Southern District of New York. He called it a “classic” case of corporate corruption. “That’s cheating, and it’s against the law,” he said. A federal indictment obtained by Bloomberg News outlines more than a dozen charges against Lewis, including securities fraud.