Stephen Chamberlain, an associate of the tech tycoon Mike Lynch, died in hospital three days after being hit by a car while out running in Cambridgeshire, an inquest has heard.
Chamberlain was hit on 17 August when he was about six miles into his run having set out from the city of Ely that morning. The 52-year-old was the former vice-president of finance at the British software firm Autonomy and a co-defendant with Lynch in a US fraud trial over the sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for $11bn.
A car driven by a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham hit Chamberlain at about 10.10am, causing him “significant injuries”, according to Cambridgeshire police and Caroline Jones, the area coroner for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough. His medical cause of death was recorded as traumatic head injury.
At the inquest in Alconbury, Jones said: “A vehicle travelling between Stretham and Wicken on the A1123 crested a humpback bridge and was presented with a runner crossing the road from the nearside to the offside between two parts of a bridleway.”
Chamberlain was taken to Addenbrooke’s hospital in Cambridge where he died on 20 August. The hearing was adjourned pending the outcome of the police investigation and any possible prosecutions.
The inquest comes after Lynch and six other people onboard the Bayesian superyacht died when it capsized and sank off the coast of Sicily on 19 August. Italian prosecutors have placed three crew members under investigation for manslaughter and shipwreck, including the captain of the yacht, James Cutfield.
The deaths come after Lynch and Chamberlain were cleared in June of US fraud charges that could have resulted in years in prison.
In 2005, Chamberlain joined Autonomy, a company founded by Lynch with two partners in 1996. Its software enabled a computer to search huge quantities of diverse information, including phone calls, emails and videos, and recognise words. In 2011 the US computing giant HP swooped to take it over.
Chamberlain, under Lynch and the company’s finance chief, Sushovan Hussain, was a key part of the team that saw through the $11bn deal. A year later, however, the deal soured after they left the company, when HP alleged “serious accounting improprieties” and knocked $8.8bn off its value.
A US Department of Justice investigation followed and, in 2018, Lynch and Chamberlain were indicted for conspiracy and wire fraud. Chamberlain was accused of artificially inflating Autonomy’s revenues and making false and misleading statements to auditors, analysts and regulators.
Chamberlain and Lynch were found not guilty of the charge in June after a trial at a federal court in San Francisco, California. Hussain was sentenced to five years in prison in the US after being convicted in 2018 of fraud in relation to the HP deal.
In an earlier statement released through the police, Chamberlain’s family described him as a “much-loved husband, father, son, brother and friend”.
“He was an amazing individual whose only goal in life was to help others in any way possible,” the statement said. “He will be deeply missed but forever in the hearts of his loved ones.”
Gary Lincenberg, Chamberlain’s lawyer, said in an earlier statement: “Steve fought successfully to clear his good name at trial earlier this year, and his good name now lives on through his wonderful family.”
