HP lawsuit labels Autonomy execs self-righteous fraudsters
Former brass of UK software player accuse HP of more 'breathless ranting' as ex-CFO Sushovan Hussain sued
HP's ongoing battle with the former leadership of Autonomy has ratcheted up yet another notch, with a lawsuit filing that characterises the UK software player's former executive team as self-righteous fraudsters.
In the wake of the HP revealing in 2011 that it was to swallow a massive writedown related to the Autonomy takeover, a number of shareholder groups launched litigation against the vendor. HP recently announced it had agreed a settlement to those cases, the terms of which include provision for the company's legal team to help the shareholders launch actions against the former leaders of Autonomy.
Documents filed this week with the District Court of Northern California reveal that the first such lawsuit - against Autonomy's ex-chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain - is underway. The filing claims that Hussain is "one of the chief architects of the massive fraud on HP that precipitated this litigation".
The former Autonomy finance chief was given some stock by his company's new owner shortly after the takeover, but the HP filing decries the suggestion that he should have any scope to oppose the recent settlement.
"The notion that he should be permitted to intervene and challenge the substance of a settlement designed to protect the interests of the company he defrauded is ludicrous," it says. "The shareholder plaintiffs who originally sued HP's directors and officers now agree that Hussain, along with Autonomy's founder and CEO, Michael Lynch, should be held accountable for this fraud."
The documents go on to accuse Autonomy management of being holier-than-thou in a bid to save their own skins.
"Hussain also knows that prosecutors on both sides of the Atlantic are investigating him, that HP is cooperating with those authorities and that, until he is charged, he has no access to the information that HP is providing to the authorities," says the filing. "So Hussain, the fraudster, wraps himself in a mantle of self-righteousness in an attempt to obtain discovery that he hopes will help him stay out of prison and defend the civil litigation he expects HP will file in the UK."
A statement issued by Lynch and Hussain to Reuters said: "This breathless ranting from HP is the sort of personal smear we've come to expect. As the emotional outbursts go up, the access to facts seems to go down. Meg Whitman is buying off a bunch of lawyers so she doesn't have to answer charges of incompetence and misdirection in front of a judge and jury."