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The former finance chief of software firm Autonomy has been banned from practising as an accountant in the UK, a month after its founder was acquitted of fraud by a US jury.
Sushovan Hussain has already been suspended from the profession and will be disqualified until at least November 2038, the Financial Reporting Council, the audit watchdog, said.
It is the latest fallout from a long-running legal battle over the £7bn sale of Autonomy to the US.
Ban: Former UK finance chief Sushovan Hussain banned from practising as an accountant in the UK until at least November 2038
Hussain was convicted of fraud in the United States and served a five-year prison sentence, as well as facing multimillion-dollar fines.
Last month, Autonomy founder Mike Lynch was acquitted of fraud in San Francisco. The sale of the company, once Britain’s biggest software group and a FTSE 100 member, was one of the biggest UK tech deals at the time, but collapsed after HP wrote down most of the value within a year.
Prosecutors said Lynch tried to inflate Autonomy’s revenue figures, but Lynch said he confided financial matters and certain accounting decisions to Hussain.
The watchdog said of its ban on Hussain: “The lengthy period of exclusion reflects the seriousness of the misconduct as evidenced by the fraud offences under the US criminal conviction.”
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