British billionaire and owner of the Tottenham Hotspur football club Joe Lewis was indicted on insider trading charges by the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, the office announced Tuesday.
In a video posted to social media, US Attorney Damian Williams accused Lewis of orchestrating a "brazen insider trading scheme" between 2013 and 2021, passing confidential trading tips to his "romantic partners, his personal assistants, his private pilots, and his friends," helping them make millions of dollars.
"Joe Lewis is a wealthy man, But as we allege he used insider information as a way to compensate his employees or to shower gifts on his friends and lovers."
In one instance, the Southern District's indictment, first obtained by Bloomberg, alleges that Lewis loaned his pilots each $500,000 so they could trade a biotech company's stock before a public announcement was made about the results of a clinical trial.
On other occasions, Lewis allegedly pressed his personal assistants and romantic partners to trade on the information he provided as soon as possible.
Lewis is the majority owner of the Premier League football team, Tottenham Hotspur, and the founder of private equity company Tavistock Group, which invests in more than 200 companies across 13 countries, according to its website.
David M. Zornow, who is counsel to Lewis, said in a statement, "The government has made an egregious error in judgment in charging Mr. Lewis, an 86-year-old man of impeccable integrity and prodigious accomplishment. Mr. Lewis has come to the US voluntarily to answer these ill-conceived charges, and we will defend him vigorously in court."
Neither Tottenham Hotspur nor Tavistock Group immediately responded to a request for comment.
