Jones, 55, was unanimously convicted of raping the two women in Manchester 30 years ago. He was convicted of the sexual assault of a woman who worked for his company in January. Still, that majority verdict could not be reported until now because of a reporting restriction.

Jones was considered one of the most influential technology magnates in the UK, with an estimated wealth of about £700 million. His empire began to crumble in 2019 after the Financial Times published an investigation into his workplace conduct and treatment of female employees, prompting him to quit the company he founded 20 years earlier.

The two women Jones raped in the 1990s, who do not know each other, said in court that he attacked them in his flat on separate occasions after he gave them a substance that left them stupefied and unable to fight him off.

They both knew Jones socially through his work as a pianist at local hotels and pubs across Manchester before his business career took off, the November trial in Manchester Crown Court heard.

Jones, who later gained a prominent public profile as a self-styled straight-talking business guru, claimed he had never met one of the women and said he had a consensual sexual relationship with the second.

In a separate trial in January, Jones was found guilty of sexually assaulting a third woman — a former employee at UKFast — while she accompanied him on a business trip to London a decade ago.

The father of four was acquitted of sexually assaulting and raping a fourth woman, another former UKFast employee, at the January trial.

Jurors in the November trial heard harrowing details of the rapes Jones committed.

Jones, who once featured in the Sunday Times rich list, had denied all the charges in both trials. In 2015, he was awarded an MBE for services to the digital economy.

Isla Chilton, senior district crown prosecutor for the North West Rape and Serious Sexual Offence Unit at the Crown Prosecution Service, said: “Jones raped two women with no thought for how his actions would affect them. By denying the offences, he compounded the harm to the women, attempting to evade responsibility for his actions. The jury saw through his lies and found him guilty.”

The trials were closely followed by former employees of UKFast, which rebranded as ANS after the initial charges against Jones became public in 2021. Ironically, under his leadership, the company regularly featured in the Sunday Times’ “Best Companies to Work For” list.

However, in 2019 more than 30 former employees spoke to the FT 2019 alleging a toxic working culture at UKFast under Jones’s leadership. Many claimed that sexual harassment or inappropriate behaviour by their former boss was commonplace, including unwanted massages, meetings in hot tubs and saunas, and intrusive questions about their sex lives.

The former employees also alleged a workplace culture of fear, with Jones prone to angry, unpredictable outbursts and presiding over a “hire and fire” atmosphere.

After he quit, Inflexion, the private equity firm that had a minority stake in the internet company at the time, bought out Jones and his wife Gail, also a director at UKFast, in 2020.