Sicily: In a tragic development, the body of UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch has been retrieved on Thursday from the wreckage of a luxury superyacht that sank earlier this week near Italy's Sicily due to a violent storm, confirmed the Italian coast guard. Lynch's 18-year-old daughter Hannah is still unaccounted for, while the bodies of four others were recovered from the yacht on Wednesday.
Lynch, 59, struck gold when he sold Autonomy, a software maker he founded in 1996, to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. However, he became embroiled in a decade-long battle after being accused of cooking the books to make the sale and fired by HP’s then-CEO Meg Whitman. He was extradited from the UK to face criminal charges of engineering a massive fraud, ending with a verdict in his favour.
This came after divers and rescue crews had recovered four bodies from the wreckage of the boat, taking the death count to five while the search continued for two more missing passengers, including Lynch and his daughter. The British-flagged, 56-metre "Bayesian" had a crew of 10 people and 12 passengers, representing British, American and Canadian nationalities.
The ship was carrying 22 passengers and crew and was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it disappeared beneath the waves in a matter of minutes due to bad weather. Lynch, 59, was one of the UK's best-known tech entrepreneurs and had invited friends to join him on the yacht to celebrate his recent acquittal in a major US fraud trial.
Lynch's wife rescued to safety
The entrepreneur's body was brought ashore in a blue body bag and driven in an ambulance to a nearby hospital morgue. Hopes have largely faded for chances of his daughter's survival, as a lot of time has passed since the accident. After the disaster, at least 15 people, including Lynch's wife, managed to get to safety, while the body of the onboard chef, Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, was found near the wreck hours after the disaster.
Besides Lynch and his daughter, the other people who failed to escape from the boat were Judy and Jonathan Bloomer, a non-executive chair of Morgan Stanley International; and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, Neda Morvillo. The disaster has baffled naval marine experts who said such a vessel, with top-class fittings and safety features, should have been able to withstand suc weather.
Specialist rescuers have been searching inside the hull of the sunken yacht for the past three days, but operations have been challenging due to the depth and the narrowness of the places that the divers are scouring, the fire brigade said.
How did the ship sink so quickly?
The superyacht was built in 2008 by Italian shipyard Perini Navi and was thought to have top-class features to withstand extreme weather. Civil protection officials said they believed the ship was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout, and sank within minutes. Local media said a fierce storm, including water spouts, had battered the area overnight but skies were clear and seas calm by Monday morning.
Such ships are required to have watertight, sub-compartments that are specifically designed to prevent a rapid, catastrophic sinking even when some parts fill with water. The accident suggested that the water entered the hull too quickly or the vessel flipped over to the side. Prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have opened an investigation and authorities have started questioning passengers and witnesses.
Giovanni Costantino, CEO of the Italian Sea Group, which includes Perini, said the Bayesian was "one of the safest boats in the world" and basically unsinkable. He believed the disaster was caused by a chain of human mistakes and that the storm had been expected.
(with Reuters inputs)
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