The Squiz 

Questions linger in the wake of the sinking of a luxury sailing yacht off the coast of Sicily, which has left one man dead and 6 others missing. The missing include big business names British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer. Another 15 passengers were rescued after the 56m yacht sank within minutes of being hit by a freak storm in the early hours of Monday morning. Italian authorities said it’s a case of being ”in the wrong place at the wrong time”. 

Who is Mike Lynch?

It’s a good question because he’s been the person most focused on in the reporting. The 59yo is said to be ‘Britain’s Bill Gates’ after he co-founded and spent a decade building the UK’s biggest software firm Autonomy. It analyses huge caches of data and was bought by Hewlett-Packard in 2011 for over $16 billion. That deal led to 13 years of legal wrangling over allegations he’d committed fraud by exaggerating Autonomy’s success to get top dollar. It eventually saw him extradited to the US to face charges, where he was acquitted just weeks ago. Last month Lynch said he feared dying in prison if convicted due to a lung condition. “I have various medical things that would have made it very difficult to survive,” he said. 

Fascinating…

And it doesn’t end there… Just 2 days before the yacht sank, Lynch’s co-defendant in the case died after being “fatally struck” by a car. That was Autonomy’s former VP of finance Stephen Chamberlain, who was also acquitted – he was out running when he was killed in the English village of Stretham in Cambridgeshire. Chamberlain’s lawyer Gary Lincenberg said his client “fought successfully to clear his good name, which lives on through his wonderful family.” As for the next steps, police divers are continuing to try to reach the hull of the yacht which is about 50m below the surface where it had been anchored near the town of Porticello. The missing are from several countries including the UK, which has also dispatched a 4-person team from its Marine Accident Investigation Branch to assess what happened. Reports say the body of chef Recaldo Thomas has been recovered, and police believe the remaining people may be inside the boat.