22 Aug 2024

Body of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch retrieved from yacht, source says

9:07 pm on 22 August 2024
(FILES) Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy Group, attends The Times CEO summit at the Savoy Hotel in London, on June 21, 2011. Uk tycoon Mike Lynch, who was recently acquitted in the US of an $11 billion fraud, is among those missing after a superyacht sank off southern Italy, a source close to the rescue effort said on August 19, 2024. Lynch's wife was among 15 people rescued, according to the source, after the luxury yacht 'Bayesian' sank overnight amid violent winds and rains off the coast of Sicily, leaving six others missing. (Photo by BEN GURR / POOL / AFP)

British tech magnate Mike Lynch. Photo: AFP / Pool / Ben Gurr

The body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch was retrieved on Thursday from the wreck of his family yacht that sank earlier this week off the coast of Sicily during a violent tempest, a source close to the rescue operation said.

His body was brought ashore in a blue body bag and driven in an ambulance to a nearby hospital morgue.

Lynch's 18-year daughter Hannah is still unaccounted for, the source said. The bodies of the other four people who vanished when the boat went down were recovered from the yacht on Wednesday.

The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre-long superyacht carrying 22 passengers and crew, was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it disappeared beneath the waves in a matter of minutes after a fierce storm struck.

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.

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.

Fifteen 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.

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.

It compared the efforts to those carried out, on a larger scale, for the Costa Concordia, the luxury cruise liner that capsized off the Italian island of Giglio in January 2012, killing 32 people.

Rescue boats of the Vigili del Fuoco, the Italian Corps. of Firefighters operate off Porticello near Palermo, on August 21, 2024 two days after the British-flagged luxury yacht Bayesian sank. Rescuers with divers and an underwater drone search for six people believed trapped when the boat sank. Among the six missing were UK tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, and Jonathan Bloomer, the chair of Morgan Stanley International, and his wife Judy. The Bayesian, which had 22 people aboard including 10 crew, was anchored some 700 metres from port before dawn when it was struck by a waterspout, a sort of mini tornado. Fifteen people aboard, including a mother with a one-year-old baby, were plucked to safety; one man has been found dead; and six people remain missing. (Photo by Alberto PIZZOLI / AFP)

Photo: ALBERTO PIZZOLI/AFP

'Unsinkable'

The disaster has baffled naval marine experts who said such a vessel, built by Italian high-end yacht manufacturer Perini and presumed to have top-class fittings and safety features, should have been able to withstand such weather.

Prosecutors in the nearby town of Termini Imerese have opened an investigation and authorities have started questioning passengers and witnesses.

The captain, New Zealander James Cutfield, and crew have made no official comment on the disaster.

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 added that he believed the disaster was caused by a chain of human mistakes and that the storm had been expected, in interviews with Italian media.

"The ship sank because it took on water, from where investigators will have to say," Costantino told television news programme TG1 late on Wednesday.

Citing data from the yacht's automatic tracking system and based on available footage, Costantino said it took 16 minutes from when the wind began buffeting the yacht, and it began taking on water, for it to sink.

Costantino said the Milan-listed group had suffered "enormous damage" to its reputation, with shares falling 2.5 percent since the disaster.

- Reuters