Billionaire tech tycoon Mike Lynch among six missing as superyacht sinks
The captain of the Bayesian superyacht which sank off the coast of Sicily with billionaire owner Mike Lynch on board has broken his silence.
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The captain of the Bayesian superyacht has broken his silence after the vessel sank off the coast of Sicily.
The luxury yacht was hit by a tornado yesterday off the coast of Sicily at about 5am local time.
Six people are missing including the boat’s owner, billionaire tech tycoon Mike Lynch, 59, and his daughter, Hannah, 18.
It is feared some people became trapped in their cabins.
Captain speaks out
The $27 million Bayesian sank when its vast mast collapsed and the vessel capsized.
The ship’s captain James Calfield, 51, spoke from hospital yesterday and said had no idea the tornado was coming towards the ship.
“We didn’t see it coming,” he told La Repubblica.
Some 22 horrified passengers, made up of passengers and staff, screamed in fear as the boat flipped over.
Fifteen people were rescued, six are missing and one has already been found dead – understood to be the yacht’s cook.
A source close to the recovery operation also told AFP divers who recovered the first body had seen one of the missing six trapped inside the sunken vessel.
Specialist cave divers and their equipment were flown to Sicily to access the confined spaces of the wreck.
Legal battle
The passengers on board were celebrating Mr Lynch’s recent acquittal in a fraud trial, according to British newspaper The Telegraph.
The billionaire entrepreneur sold his tech firm Autonomy to US computing giant Hewlett-Packard for $US11 billion ($16b) in 2011, but a lengthy legal battle followed as he was accused of inflating the value of the company.
A San Francisco jury acquitted Mr Lynch, who has been dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates”, in June.
The guests on the doomed superyacht included staff from the legal firm Clifford Chance and Mr Lynch’s company Invoke Capital, the newspaper reported.
Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer, 70, is also among the missing people, according to British newspaper The Times.
Double tragedy as co-defendant dies in England
Eerily, Mr Lynch’s co-defendant in the fraud trial, Stephen Chamberlain, died after being hit by a car over the weekend. He had also been acquitted of all charges in June.
Mr Chamberlain was hit by a car on Saturday, local time, in Cambridgeshire and taken to hospital where he later died.
He was Autonomy’s vice president of finance before he left the company in 2012.
A source told The Telegraph: “Our dear client and friend Steve Chamberlain was fatally struck by a car on Saturday while out running.
“He was a courageous man with unparalleled integrity, and we deeply miss him. He fought successfully to clear his good name, which lives on through his wonderful family.”
The Sun understands he was taken off life support on Sunday, just hours before the yacht sank.
Mr Lynch told British newspaper The Times in July that he himself had “various medical things that would have made it difficult to survive” in an American prison.
“It’s bizarre, but now you have a second life. The question is, what do you want to do with it?” he said, speaking about the verdict.
Despite the acquittal, the fraud case is not closed, international news agency AFP reports.
In 2022, London’s High Court ruled in a civil fraud case that HP had been duped and had overpaid for Autonomy.
The court has yet to rule on the billions of dollars in damages claimed by the American group.
Also sued by HP, Autonomy’s former chief financial officer Sushovan Hussain was found guilty of fraud in 2018 by a US jury, with Hussain jailed for five years.
Luxury superyacht sinks
The 56-metre-long, $320,000-a-week vessel was struck by a sudden storm while moored off the coast of Porticello, east of Palermo.
Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, is among 15 people who have been rescued.
Three other Brits, two Americans, and one Canadian are among the remaining six missing.
An expert team of divers have already been able to locate the vessel 48 metres below the water on the seabed.
Almost all of the 22 passengers and crew on-board are said to have been inside their cabins and rooms when the weather took a turn.
A one-year-old British girl was rescued by her mum in the sea after the boat sank, before they were rushed to hospital.
Her mother Charlotte Golunski spoke about the frantic rescue, telling Giornale di Sicilia: “For two seconds I lost the baby in the sea, then I immediately hugged her again amid the fury of the waves.
“I held her tightly, close to me, while the sea was stormy. Many were screaming.
“Luckily the lifeboat inflated and 11 of us managed to get on board.”
The father was also on-board at the time of the horror ordeal.
Ms Golunski managed to swim over to one of the rafts where she and her daughter were taken to safety along with 11 others.
Camper & Nicholsons, the managers of the yacht, said in a statement that they were “assisting with the ongoing search” for the missing people.
“The boat was all lit up. Around 4:30am, it was no longer there,” said one witness cited by ANSA.
“A beautiful boat where there was a party. A normal joyous vacation day at sea turned into tragedy”.
Karsten Borner, the captain of another yacht anchored nearby at the time of the storm, said there was a “very strong hurricane gust” and he had to battle to keep his vessel steady.
All of a sudden “we noticed that the ship behind us was gone”, he told journalists in Porticello.
“We found this life raft … with a little baby, and the wife of the owner,” he said.
Fisherman Fabio Cefalu said he and other fishermen rushed to help after seeing a distress flare go up.
“But we didn’t find anyone in the sea, we only found cushions and the remains of the boat,” he told AFP.
Tech billionaire among those feared dead
Originally from Suffolk in east England, Mr Lynch was a former adviser to two British prime ministers and once a star entrepreneur who seemed to represent a rare tech British success story.
The businessman has a fortune of £500 million ($965 million) according to the latest Sunday Times “Rich List”, and owes his fame to his software firm Autonomy which he sold to Hewlett-Packard for $US11 billion ($16 billion) in 2011.
He founded the company in 1996 in Cambridge, where he earned his doctorate, and turned it into a leading British tech firm.
But just one year after the mega-deal, HP reported a writedown of $US8.8 billion ($13 billion) – including more than $US5 billion ($7.4 billion) it attributed to inflated data from Autonomy – plunging Mr Lynch into a decade-long fraud scandal.
Prosecutors accused him of taking part in a massive scheme as Autonomy’s chief executive to deceive HP by pumping up his company’s value before its sale.
Mr Lynch was extradited from Britain to the US in 2023 to stand trial, facing two decades in jail if convicted of the 17 charges and spending the year in house arrest.
But in June he was acquitted on all charges.
“I am looking forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field,” Mr Lynch said after the verdict was handed down in a San Francisco court.
Mr Lynch – who made around $US 815 million ($1.2 billion) from the Autonomy sale – always denied the fraud charges, accusing HP of making him a scapegoat for its own failings.
After returning to the UK, Lynch told The Times newspaper in July he had “various medical things that would have made it difficult to survive” in an American prison.
“It’s bizarre, but now you have a second life. The question is, what do you want to do with it?.” he told the publication after his acquittal.
Father of two daughters aged 18 and 21, and a dog lover – owning two dachshunds and four sheepdogs – Mr Lynch has a home in the affluent London district of Chelsea, according to the newspaper, as well as owning a farm in Suffolk.
A spokeswoman for Mr Lynch declined to comment when contacted by AFP.
— with AFP
Originally published as Billionaire tech tycoon Mike Lynch among six missing as superyacht sinks
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