British billionaire Joe Lewis avoids prison in insider trading case

Joe Lewis, the British billionaire whose family owns Tottenham Hotspur football club, will avoid being sent to prison for insider trading, after a federal judge in Manhattan agreed on Thursday to sentence the 87-year-old to a $5 million fine and three years of probation.

Lewis pleaded guilty to fraud charges in January, following an investigation in which he was found to have passed on stock tips to friends, private pilots and a girlfriend. The recipients made more than half a million dollars by trading on the non-public information, to which Lewis had been privy through his seats on various corporate boards, according to prosecutors. - Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024

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