Tottenham could face Premier League quiz after Joe Lewis insider trading arrest
Tottenham Hotspur could face questions from the Premier League and Uefa after former owner Joe Lewis was arrested in the US on more than a dozen insider trading charges.
The Bahamas-based British billionaire, 86, is due to appear in court on Wednesday after being charged with 16 counts of securities fraud and three counts of conspiracy.
He is accused of “orchestrating a brazen insider trading scheme” by passing privileged information to friends, personal assistants, romantic partners and even his pilots.
Lewis is the owner of the Tavistock Group, through which he owned the Premier League club. He ceased to be a “person with significant control” of Tottenham in October as part of what was billed as a “reorganisation of the Lewis Family Trusts”.
The Premier League confirmed that change was ratified by its owners’ and directors’ test. Members of the Lewis family are potential beneficiaries of the trust which majority owns Spurs, however.
That could put the club in the spotlight at the Premier League and European governing body Uefa if Lewis is convicted.
“If the charges against Joe Lewis are proven, this will raise significant continuous monitoring questions for both the Premier League and Uefa if he remains a beneficiary of Bahamian Trust ENIC that owns the club,” Jonny Gray, Senior Managing Director for sport at Ankura, the global expert services and advisory firm, told Morning Wire
English clubs voted in March to toughen rules governing owners and directors, including adding a program of continuous monitoring.
They also approved the introduction of an independent oversight board, lowered the threshold to be considered to have control of a club, and widened the range of people to fall into the scope of the owners’ and directors’ test.
Individuals at Tottenham could also face scrutiny over whether they received any insider tips from Lewis.
A Spurs spokesperson said his charges were “a legal matter unconnected with the club and as such we have no comment.”
Prosecutor Damian Williams, of the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, said Lewis had engaged in “classic corporate corruption. It’s cheating and it’s against the law.”
He added: “Those folks then traded on that inside information and made millions of dollars on the stock market. Thanks to Lewis those bets were a sure thing.
“None of this was necessary. Joe Lewis is a wealthy man, but as we allege he used insider information to compensate his employees, or to shower gifts on his friends and lovers.”
Lewis’s legal counsel David Zornow, of law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, said: “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.”