British billionaire Joe Lewis, who as head of the Tavistock Group played a critical role in Central Florida’s development, was pardoned by President Donald Trump Thursday after pleading guilty last year to insider trading charges.
Lewis was a driving force in the creation and expansion of Orlando’s Lake Nona area, including the Medical City hospital and university hub there, as well as the luxury Isleworth community adjacent to Windermere.
According to the New York Times, a White House official said Lewis, 88, had requested the pardon to allow him to receive medical treatment and visit his grandchildren and great grandchildren in Florida.
Tavistock founder Joe Lewis leaves Manhattan federal court, Wednesday, July 26, 2023, in New York. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)
Lewis, whose family is also the majority shareholder in the English Premier League club Tottenham Hotspur, was fined $5 million but was spared jail time for his role in the trading scheme, which prosecutors said involved feeding corporate secrets to romantic partners, personal assistants, friends and his pilots, earning them millions of dollars illegally.
“I knew at the time what I was doing was wrong, and I am so embarrassed and I apologize to the court for my conduct,” Lewis said in court last year.
Lewis no longer holds a major role at Tavistock following his conviction, according to Bloomberg News.
In addition to his company’s developing the 17-square-mile Lake Nona area, which now has a population of over 60,000, Lewis also donated the land and $12.5 million of his own money to build the University of Central Florida College of Medicine in the neighborhood’s Medical City.
In 1997, Lewis made a $7.5 million gift to the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Orlando and later unsuccessfully attempted to get the Scripps Institute to build an East Coast expansion of its biotech operations in the city.
He was named the Orlando Sentinel’s Central Floridian of the Year in 2006.
In 2019, Lewis pledged $10 million and pieces of his world-renowned art collection to the Orlando Museum of Art in an effort to get the museum to relocate to Lake Nona, but that deal never materialized.
Tavistock Group also bought and expanded what’s today known as the Isleworth Golf and Country Club near Windermere, where Lewis built his own 17,000-square-foot English-style mansion and listed it for sale in 2020 for $15 million.
One of Tavistock’s latest initiatives is the rapidly-growing Sunbridge master-planned community, spanning 27,000 acres in Osceola and Orange counties.
Trump has used his pardon and commutation powers aggressively in his second term, drawing some criticism for his choices. Besides Lewis, this month Trump also pardoned former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and multiple other people for their roles in his 2020 election denial scheme.
Staff writer Laura Kinsler and the Associated Press contributed to this report.