A Suffolk tech tycoon who faced a legal nightmare after he was extradited to the US to face fraud charges has revealed how his friends back home in the county helped sustain him during his darkest hours. 

Former Autonomy boss Mike Lynch was cleared in June this year of all 15 charges by a jury in San Francisco. The case followed a bitter 12-year legal wrangle.

Now he plans to campaign against the UK's "one-sided" extradition arrangement with the US - which he said resulted in him being sent there to stand trial without British courts scrutinising and testing the evidence against him.

(Image: Andy Abbott)

The case brought against him has also prompted him to call for a UK equivalent to America's non-profit Innocence Project to help others who find themselves in similar legal plights to his own but without the means to contest them.

He will appeal a decision against him in a separate civil case in the UK which was heard before he was extradited. Damages have yet to be decided in the case.

He feels he has a strong case after witness evidence submitted to the UK court came under scrutiny in his US trial - revealing what he considers to be a very different picture to the one outlined in the UK case. 

His ordeal began shortly after the software company he founded was bought by tech giant Hewlett Packard (HP) in 2011 in an £8.5bn deal. Dr Lynch - who had an 8% stake in the company - made $516m (about £400m).

The deal quickly turned sour and HP - which brought in a new chief executive - turned on what Dr Lynch described as its "unwanted stepchild" after a big write-down in Autonomy's value.

He claimed the write-down was due to HP's mishandling. "Basically, they destroyed it," he said. 

But HP claimed that Dr Lynch and others had cooked the books prior to the sale - a charge the software entrepreneur always strenuously denied.

(Image: Andy Abbott)

At trial in the US the odds were stacked overwhelmingly against him - with a conviction rate of more than 99% in US federal criminal cases. "I was very lucky to have the resources to fight it," admitted the entrepreneur, who has invested in several start-ups. 

After a 12-week trial, the jury agreed with the accused Brit and he was on his way back to Suffolk. After boarding the plane home, he revealed he still didn't feel entirely secure until he passed the border into Canada.

The justice system in America is "horrendous", he said. "It's a very draconian, inflexible system. You would see defendants who were obviously mentally ill and the system didn't seem able to cope with them."

The extradition treaty with the US meant any UK citizen with an involvement in an American company could be swept up in the same nightmare to engulf him - as long as a US prosecutor filled in the correct form, he said. The US system mixed politics and justice, he added.

"I have resources and my life has been about dealing with complicated things," he added. "In managing the stress you learn there are certain directions you can't go and anger is one of them.

"But you have to realise there's someone else in that situation - that's why I want to make sure this doesn't happen to someone else."

Within a day or two of arriving in London after his acquittal, the relieved entrepreneur was back home on his farm where he has been recovering from his legal ordeal - which included being chained by US officers at Heathrow, a couple of days in a US jail, 13 months under house arrest and a 12-week trial.

He brought with him his beloved Shetland sheepdog Faucet - a gift from wife Angela Bacares to comfort him during his house arrest.

Angela divided her time between San Francisco and their Suffolk home so that she could support her daughters aged 18 and 21 but Faucet was his constant companion. The children came during the holidays and some friends from Silicon Valley also paid him a visit. Various Suffolk friends also dropped by.

"It's really important because you are so far from home and you are in this nightmare where nothing makes sense any more."

He was assigned armed guards. These would take Faucet for walks and have become good friends, he said.

The pup joined the couple's other five dogs and is getting on very well with them and enjoying the Suffolk countryside.

The stress of the trial on the father of two daughters has been immense. "It just doesn't register how tired you are," he said speaking from his 2,500-acre farm near Wickham Market this week.

Little ailments surfaced, he slept for 12-hour periods and he developed an "horrendous" cough from which he has now recovered, he said.

But coming home to Suffolk has been "wonderful", he said. A group of Suffolk friends came out to welcome him home - clearly a source of comfort and delight to him. "Suffolk is totally home for me," he said.

He found the UK justice system much more humane in his own case. The Metropolitan Police met him around the corner from his Chelsea home during his forced removal rather than subjecting him to being handcuffed in his home. 

On his flight home he recalled watching his screen to see his BA flight cross the Canadian border and breathing a sigh of relief. "You never quite know with the American system because they have always got some twist," he said.

He hopes to thank the officers at the central Ipswich police station where he had to report every Monday morning during the extradition process for their kindness and courtesy in spite of the circumstances. "I think they all knew it was a crazy situation - I'm hoping I'll get a chance to thank them," he said.

When he returned, he was delighted to be greeted by a garden full of people who had come to see him.

"Suffolk sometimes we take it for granted but it's a wonderful place," he said.

"This time of year it's just stunningly beautiful and I have had such wonderful support from all my Suffolk friends through the whole ordeal so it was really nice to see them again and thank them."

After his extradition, his friends from the county would send him letters and phone him which boosted his morale.

"The one thing you find you want to hear about is the most simple things from home. I just wanted to hear 'the river is flooded today' or 'the electricity went off' or 'someone's cow escaped' - all those things that bring you back to the real world," he said.

"I was lucky enough to get back to Suffolk in June. It has been a total delight to be back."

He added: "The lovely thing I find about Suffolk is there is still a real sense of community there. You get to know lots of people doing all sorts of things."

Dr Lynch - now aged 59 - has lived in Suffolk for the last 34 years, arriving in Yoxford in about 1990 before moving to the farm in 2009.

As well as an arable operation, he keeps rare breed livestock - including around 60 Red Poll cattle, Suffolk sheep and some Gloucestershire Old Spots which run around in the woods.

"I have been known to pull the odd calf out in an emergency," he said. Although brought up in Ilford, Dr Lynch - whose parents emigrated from Ireland - stayed with an uncle who kept cattle on the Acle marshes between Norwich and Great Yarmouth as a youngster. 

"The Irish background is very much cattle-related, " he explained. At one time while at Acle he had to run down the track to stop a train after one of the cattle got stuck, he recalled.

He was a gifted pupil and went on to gain a PhD in signal processing at Cambridge University before launching Autonomy in 1996.

It started with just a handful of employees and went on to employ 2,000 across 20 countries gaining some blue-chip customers for its software, which made sense out of complicated data.

Now he is enjoying his new-found freedom. "Obviously it's a massive relief - it's wonderful to be home and to be back in Suffolk in phenomenal," he said.