Two former champions of Belgian business went on trial today charged with defrauding investors of up to €225 million in the country's biggest corporate crime trial.
Jo Lernout and Pol Hauspie, feted in the late 1990s for their innovative speech-recognition technology company, are accused with 19 others of falsifying accounts and stock price manipulation from 1997 to 2000.
They deny the charges.
Lernout & Hauspie Speech Products (LHSP) was set up in 1987 and grew into a group worth almost €7.4 billion.
The company's shares, listed on Nasdaq and Easdaq, hovered at just under €15 for most of 1999, shot up to about €52 in March 2000 but tumbled to below €7.40 by October 2000.
Thousands of investors, including public bodies, lost millions of dollars.
More than 13,000 of them were represented today in a common action led by shareholder advisory group Deminor and consumer association Test Achat. The groups are seeking damages of €185 million to €225 million.
Prosecutors say the company inflated its sales figures over the four-year period in which the stock price soared. Its accounts seemed to show that sales to South Korea in particular had rocketed.
The trial is being held in a conference centre in the Flemish city of Ghent as no court room could accommodate the number of investors wanting to attend.