Suddenly, protracted soccer transfer sagas are the least of Joe Lewis’ worries. The Department of Justice has leveled a raft of accusations at the billionaire owner of a Premier League club, who stands accused of conspiring to defraud Mirati Therapeutics and insider trading in Solid Biosciences.
Lewis has invested a fortune, made through activities including currency trading, in a wide range of areas. Perhaps best known as the owner of Tottenham Hotspur soccer club, the British billionaire is also the principal owner of the investment organization Tavistock Group and majority owner of a biotech hedge fund. Lewis’ investment activity from 2013 to 2021 caught the attention of the DOJ.
According to an indictment unsealed in Manhattan federal court, and uploaded by Bloomberg, Lewis allegedly “engaged in multiple schemes to violate the securities laws through insider trading and submitting false and misleading filings” to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
In a statement, U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said Lewis abused his access to corporate boardrooms and repeatedly provided insider information to his romantic partners, personal assistants, private pilots and friends. The recipients of the information “made millions of dollars in the stock market,” Williams said, and Lewis used confidential information to “shower gifts on his friends and lovers.”
Some of the accusations relate to Lewis’ involvement with Mirati and Solid Bio. The biotech side of the story told by the DOJ starts with Lewis’ investment in Solid Bio. After becoming a significant investor in the genetic medicine company in 2018, Lewis received confidential information about a planned funding round.
Lewis told “a girlfriend” who was staying with him at the Four Seasons Hotel in Seoul, South Korea, to buy Solid Bio stock after receiving the information, according to the DOJ. The girlfriend allegedly then bought $700,000 in Solid Bio stock. The next day, Lewis flew from Seoul to Massachusetts. According to the DOJ, Lewis told the two pilots of the private airplane to buy stock in Solid Bio as soon as possible.
Later, press releases about the financing and clinical data sent Solid Bio’s share price up. The girlfriend sold her stock for a 118% gain, according to the indictment, and the pilots turned a profit despite talking to Lewis too late to benefit from the share price bump triggered by the financing news.
The story then turns to Mirati. Lewis allegedly received confidential information on the oncology biotech because he controls a seat on the board. Aaron Davis, CEO of Lewis’ biotech hedge fund Boxer Capital, is on Mirati's board.
According to the DOJ, Lewis learned from an employee of his hedge fund that Mirati had positive results from a clinical trial in 2019. Lewis allegedly called his girlfriend and told her to sell her stake in Solid Bio and acquire Mirati shares. The DOJ claims Lewis told his two pilots to buy the stock and lent them $500,000 each to build a stake in the biotech, while also sharing information with several other people.
The DOJ has accused the businessman of conspiring to defraud Mirati by amassing a more than 20% stake in the biotech by hiding shares “through shell corporations in the names of nominees” and by deliberately omitting those entities from SEC filings, falsely reporting his ownership and causing false statements to be made to HSBC Bank.