For Tottenham’s public relations team, the sight of Joe Lewis leaving a New York courtroom flanked by an associate wearing a Spurs-branded baseball cap was likely unwelcome.
Tottenham have worked hard to distance themselves from their former owner, who yesterday apologised to a Manhattan judge when he pleaded guilty to three counts of insider trading.
Lewis, 86, admitted to one count of conspiracy to commit securities fraud and two counts of securities fraud, as part of an agreement with the Manhattan US Attorney’s office.
He was hit with a 19-count indictment in July — 16 of securities fraud and three of conspiracy — for alleged crimes spanning 2013 to 2021.
“I am so embarrassed and I apologise to the court for my conduct,” Lewis told the judge yesterday.
As part of his plea deal, Lewis has the right to appeal if he is sentenced to prison time, his lawyer David Zornow confirmed.
The scandal tarnishes the reputation of Lewis, the East End boy who went on to become one of Britain’s richest men, and is uncomfortable for Spurs.
No one should need reminding of Lewis’s close association with the club, even if he no longer has anything to do with it in a legal capacity.
He has been synonymous with Spurs since his former company, ENIC, bought Sir Alan Sugar’s 29.9 per cent stake for £22million in 2000.
For more than two decades, the Bahamas-based billionaire was Tottenham’s owner, despite rarely appearing at matches (typically around once a season and only on special occasions, such as the first game at the new stadium or the Champions League Final) or talking publicly about the club.
Spurs are 86.58 per cent owned by ENIC, which in turn is 70.12 per cent controlled by the Lewis Family Trust, with Daniel Levy, the club’s chairman, and certain members of his family holding the other 29.88 per cent of the investment company. In October 2022, Lewis ‘ceased to be a person with significant control’ of the Trust, though it retains his name, and he is not a beneficiary of it.
On the face of it, then, Lewis’s mea culpa and impending return to court for sentencing on March 28 has no impact whatsoever on Tottenham, who yesterday declined to comment but in July described the situation as a “legal matter unconnected with the club”.
Lewis’s fall from grace is, however, likely to be uncomfortable for Levy, who has shared a close business and personal relationship with his former partner for most of his career.
When he was involved in Spurs, Lewis trusted the day-to-day running of the club to Levy, 25 years his junior and considered his protege, and rarely got involved in football or business decisions.
The billionaire was, nonetheless, widely believed to be the silent power behind the throne, occasionally rumoured to have steered Levy in one direction or another, and jokingly referred to by many Spurs fans as ‘Uncle Joe’.
In September, Levy effectively put Spurs up for sale, admitting for the first time in an interview with Bloomberg that he was open to selling a stake or more, saying he had “a duty to consider anything that anyone may want to propose”, while insisting he had no interest in leaving.
There will inevitably be a fresh round of speculation over a sale soon, though it is unclear at this stage how the Lewis scandal might impact proceedings.
Any potential investor would still have to approach Levy or the two trustees who were appointed in 2022 to run the Lewis Family Trust, and it is naturally difficult to say what influence Lewis has over the relations who will be influential in deciding Spurs’s fate.
Lewis is worth a reported £5bn, so any fine from the court is unlikely to be so severe as to force his family to balance the books.
"Could the added scrutiny of owning a Premier League club come to feel unwelcome, making now a good time to push through a sale?"
But could the added scrutiny of owning a Premier League club come to feel unwelcome, making now a good time to push through a sale?
The bottom line is that Lewis’s decision to step away from Spurs 16 months ago, which sources close to him have insisted had nothing to do with the threat of legal action and was in keeping with the behaviour of someone of his age, was well-timed for the club, ensuring that the shockwaves from yesterday’s courtroom drama should not be felt at Hotspur Way as manager Ange Postecoglou and his squad prepare for tomorrow’s FA Cup fourth-round tie against Manchester City.
In the background, however, it remains to be seen if Lewis’s guilty pleas will have a ripple effect on the thinking of the intensely-private Levy or the fate of the club he and his former partner have transformed.
