Mike Lynch and six others died after their anchored ship sank in the Mediterranean Sea on Monday.
Authorities in Italy have opened a manslaughter investigation into the sinking of a yacht off the coast of Sicily earlier this week in which seven people died, including British technology tycoon Mike Lynch and his teenage daughter.
The investigation was announced on Saturday by the local prosecutor’s office in the Palermo metropolitan area on the island.
A case has been opened “against unknown persons for negligent shipwreck and manslaughter”, said the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Raffaele Cammarano, at a press conference, as quoted by the Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera.
The 56-metre-long British-flagged superyacht called the Bayesian, which had 22 people on board, was moored less than a kilometre off the coast of Sicily on Monday when it was hit by what is believed to be a tornado or waterspout.
The bodies of all seven victims, including Lynch, one of the UK’s best-known tech entrepreneurs, and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, have been recovered. Fifteen people survived, including Lynch’s wife and the yacht’s captain, and all have been questioned.
The investigation is focused on “Why did the crew save themselves by climbing into the lifeboat while the other guests were in the hull?” sleeping, prosecutor Cammarano said. He wondered why the crew did not see the storm coming and added that the yacht was hit by wind gusts with speeds of 100 kilometers per hour.
“There are many possibilities of guilt. It could be just the captain. It could be the whole crew. It could be the guard,” CNN quoted the head of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, Ambrogio Cartosio.
The wreck is said to be apparently intact, lying on its side at a depth of 50 meters.
The bodies were found “on the side of the ship that faces the surface”, said the commander of the local Fire Department, Girolamo Bentivoglio, who also participated in the press conference.
The victims “they were all looking [to be saved] in the last air bubbles”, he added.
Lynch, 59, invited friends to join him on the yacht to celebrate his June acquittal in a U.S. fraud trial, Reuters noted. Lynch’s attorney, Chris Morvillo, and Morgan Stanley banker Jonathan Bloomer, who appeared as a character witness in the case, were among those who died in the sinking.
According to Reuters, the sinking has puzzled naval experts, who say a luxury vessel like the Bayesian should have weathered the storm and, in any case, should not have sunk so quickly.
The Lynch family issued a statement thanking the Italian coastguard and emergency services and asking that privacy be respected. “in this moment of unspeakable pain.”
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