Autonomy founder Mike Lynch isn’t taking accusations that his former company swindled HP (HPQ) lying down. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Lynch says he was completely blindsided by HP’s announcement this morning that it would seek criminal charges against his former company for alleged “serious accounting improprieties, disclosure failures and outright misrepresentations.” Not only does Lynch flatly deny all of HP’s charges, but he says that the company is lying about Autonomy to cover up its own financial mismanagement after it bought Autonomy back in 2011.
“It does seem to be coincident with them releasing the worst set of results in their 70 year company history,” Lynch said of HP’s decision to blame Autonomy for an $8.8 billion write off. “I think what has happened here is that they have got themselves in a mess. They did the acquisition of EDS, they had to write that one down… There was a series of mismanagement steps… Now they are trying to cover it up with this big write off.”
Lynch, who formally left HP this past spring, was then asked if the company was in good shape at the time of his departure.
“No it wasn’t,” he replied.
