Joe Lewis, billionaire investor and leading stakeholder in Queensland-based agriculture giant AustAg, has been charged with insider trading in the US.

Mr Lewis, who owns 50 per cent of the Brisbane-based beef producer, and also heads the Tavistock Group was alleged to have taken part in a scheme by the US Attorney in Manhattan Damian Williams.

“Today I am announcing my office, the Southern District of New York, has indicted Joe Lewis, the British billionaire for orchestrating a brazen insider trading scheme,” Mr Williams said in a video posted to Twitter on Tuesday (local time).

“We allege that for years Joe Lewis abused his access to corporate boardrooms and repeatedly provided inside information to his romantic partners, his personal assistants, his private pilots and his friends.

“Those folks then traded on that information and made millions of dollars in the stockmarket. Thanks to Lewis those bets were a sure thing.”

Mr Williams said none of it was necessary and Mr Lewis, worth an estimated $10 billion and owner of the Tottenham Hotspurs football club, was a wealthy man, but had used the information to compensate employees or to shower gifts on his friends and lovers.

“It’s classic corporate corruption,” Mr Williams said.

“It’s cheating and it’s against the law.”

Australian Agriculture has been approached for a comment.

Mr Lewis owns just over 50 per cent of Australian Agriculture, which in turn owns about 1 per cent of the Australia’s land mass and 6.4 million hectares of Queensland grazing land.

The AACo portfolio includes foodlots and properties such as the Canobie Station, near Cloncurry, Carrum Station and the Dalgonally Station, both near Julia Creek, the Avon and Austral Downs station which spans the Queensland-NT border and the Goonoo farm and feedlot near Emerald.

Former Socceroos coach Postecoglou was appointed manager at London club Tottenham in June, following a successful spell in charge at Scottish giants Celtic.

This article first appeared in InQueensland and is republished here with permission