Sixteen people have been sued by the US government for fraudulent involvement in a company in which Bono's venture capital firm Elevation Partners invested $100 million (€85 million) this month, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has confirmed.
Elevation Partners, which Bono co-founded, injected $100 million, its largest ever investment, in the online property company, Homestore, whose former chief executive exploited the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001, to hide multi-million dollar fraud, according to SEC documents lodged in court.
Last April, the SEC indicted the former chief executive, Stuart Wolff, for "strategising" to exploit the World Trade Center disaster just one day after the 9/11 attacks. Mr Wolff is accused of making millions of dollars selling off stock in the company while fraudulently boosting profits.
The SEC office in Washington said 14 people have pleaded guilty to crimes or have received heavy fines for involvement in the Homestore fraud, including three executives who agreed to pay $4.6 million for falsely boosting the company's advertising revenue in 2001.
Mr Wolff and Homestore's former vice president, Peter Tafeen, are to go on trial on charges of using fraudulent "round-trip" transactions to present existing assets as new profits, and are also facing a multi-million dollar SEC lawsuit.
