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Italian authorities believe the chances are “minimal” that UK technology entrepreneur Mike Lynch and five other passengers missing after a luxury yacht capsized off the coast of Sicily are still alive.
Rescue operations were suspended at around 11.30pm on Tuesday at the port of Santa Flavia in Sicily and set to resume in the early morning on Wednesday, police told the Financial Times. A helicopter and a motorboat had earlier carried out a surface search.
Divers were attempting to find the missing people, who also include Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter and Jonathan Bloomer, chair of insurance group Hiscox and Morgan Stanley International.
Vincenzo Zagarola, spokesperson for the Italian coastguard, said: “We never say never. But [as] time goes by, the hopes that they might have survived inside the hull, if they were still in there, are minimal.”
Lynch’s yacht, Bayesian, sank early on Monday morning to a depth of approximately 50 metres after being hit by bad weather, according to the coastguard.
On board were 22 guests and crew, of whom 15 were rescued, one was later found dead, and six remain missing. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was among those rescued.
Divers’ efforts to access the yacht have been hampered by furniture obstructing passageways.
Zagarola said they had managed to find an initial passageway into the vessel but could still not access the entire hull. “It’s an obstacle course to find a way in,” he added.
He said rescue teams had so far found “no evidence” of the passengers inside the yacht.
The UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch is sending a team of four inspectors to Italy to make a preliminary assessment about the sinking of the British-registered superyacht, officials said on Tuesday. The MAIB will then decide whether to launch a formal probe.
Lynch, the former chief executive of Autonomy, was acquitted of criminal charges by a jury in San Francisco in June, vindicating the 59-year-old entrepreneur after a 12-year legal battle over the software group’s $11bn sale to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
Among the passengers on Lynch’s 56-metre yacht were members of his legal team and their families, who had been invited on the trip to celebrate the courtroom victory.
Christopher Morvillo of law firm Clifford Chance, who represented Lynch, is missing. Another Clifford Chance lawyer, Ayla Ronald, was rescued.
Monday’s yacht incident came on the same day as the death was confirmed of Lynch’s co-defendant in the US fraud case, Stephen Chamberlain, who was hit by a car in Cambridgeshire, England.
Chamberlain, a former vice-president of finance at Autonomy, went on to become chief operating officer at Darktrace, the cyber security company co-founded by Lynch in 2013.
Darktrace said the company was “incredibly saddened” by the “tragic death” of a “substantial contributor to the team in its early years”.
“Steve was much loved by his colleagues and leaves many friends at Darktrace. We extend our deepest condolences to his wife, Karen, and the rest of his family who are very much in our thoughts at this challenging time,” a spokesperson said.
Additional reporting by Victor Mallet in London and Marianna Giusti in Santa Flavia
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