The Phillip Burton federal building in San Francisco. Credit: Jason Doiy/ The Recorder

SAN FRANCISCO — A federal jury on Monday found Sushovan Hussain, the former chief financial officer of Autonomy Corp., guilty of fraudulently pumping up the software company's financial returns in the run-up to its $11 billion purchase by Hewlett-Packard in 2011.

A 12-member jury returned a guilty verdict on all 16 counts of wire and securities fraud after a three-month trial and one week of deliberations.

Hussain was indicted in November 2016 more than five years after the ill-fated merger at the heart of his case. HP announced an $8.8 billion write-down of Autonomy's value in 2012, and claimed that more than $5 billion of that amount was due to accounting irregularities and misrepresentations by Autonomy premerger.

In an emailed statement, Hussain's lawyer, John Keker of Keker, Van Nest & Peters, said he planned to appeal. Keker said the defense team objected to U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer's decision to exclude evidence of HP's post-merger conduct, which he claimed would have shown the company wasn't misled about Autonomy's financial well-being.

“Mr. Hussain defrauded no one and acted at all times with the highest standards of honesty, integrity and competence,” Keker said. “It is a shame that the United States Department of Justice lent its support to HP's campaign to blame others for its own catastrophic failings.”

Alex Tse, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of California, said in a prepared statement that the verdict “affirms that corporate criminals who cook their company's books to the detriment of victims in the United States, and specifically this district, will be held to account in our courts.”

“Corporate citizens and their shareholders, just like all citizens, deserve the full protection of our criminal laws,” Tse said. Assistant U.S. Attorneys Robert Leach, Adam Reeves and William Frentzen prosecuted the case for the government.

A spokesman for HP successor HPE said in an email that the company was pleased with the verdict. “That Mr Hussain attempted to depict the fraud as nothing more than a misunderstanding of international accounting rules was, and still remains, patently ridiculous – and the jury has now held him accountable for his role in defrauding HP,” he said.