Former Autonomy CEO Michael Lynch, standing trial in San Francisco on charges he used accounting trickery to dupe Hewlett-Packard into buying his company for $11 billion in 2011, testified Tuesday that he actually would have preferred to keep it independent.

Prosecutors say the British tech tycoon orchestrated what they call the biggest fraud in Silicon Valley history through a range of tactics, including padding Autonomy revenues and issuing false and misleading annual reports.