The bodies of UK tech tycoon Mike Lynch, 59, and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah have been recovered from the wreckage of his superyacht off the coast of Sicily.
Reports suggest that five bodies have been found by divers who smashed through the windows of the Bayesian, which sank on Monday after it was hit by a freak storm.
Lynch and his daughter are reported to have been found inside one of the cabins, while Canadian Broadcasting Company News previously reported that the body of Recaldo Thomas, a Canadian-born Antiguan resident who served as the ship’s cook, has also been recovered.
There were 22 people on board the 184ft luxury yacht owned by Lynch, 59, when it was reportedly caught up in a waterspout – a tornado formed over water – and sunk quickly. It now rests 49 metres below the surface, about half a mile from the Palermo coast.
The British-flagged vessel – named after Bayesian Theory, which formed the basis of Lynch’s PhD thesis and the technology of his former company Autonomy – was anchored 700 metres from the port of Porticello in when it was caught up in the bad weather.
Sources say 15 people were rescued, including a one-year-old child and Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares.
Morgan Stanley International chair Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy, as well as Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda, were the other persons missing.
Lynch was recently cleared of 15 counts of fraud – and a potential 20 years behind bars apiece – in a San Francisco trial over the 2011 sale of Cambridge firm Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard for $11.1 billion.
The former UK government adviser – who also sat on the boards of the BBC and the British Library – was accused of inflating sales and misleading regulators as well as HP, which wrote down the value of Autonomy by $8.8bn soon after the deal went through.
He was extradited to the United States and effectively placed under house arrest while the trial ran its course.
Stephen Chamberlain, former VP of finance at Autonomy – cleared of fraud alongside Lynch – died in a separate tragedy at the weekend after he was struck by a car in Cambridgeshire.
In his first interview following the trial, father-of-two Lynch – who had a lung condition – told the Sunday Times: “I have various medical things that would have made it very difficult to survive.
“I’d had to say goodbye to everything and everyone, because I didn’t know if I’d ever be coming back.
In 2022 a UK high court judge ruled that Lynch had defrauded HP following a six-year civil case. Before the disaster, he had said he intended to appeal the ruling.
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