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- Mike Lynch is missing after a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily, reports said.
- One person died and six others, including Lynch, are missing. His wife was rescued.
- Lynch, founder of Autonomy, was recently cleared of multibillion-dollar fraud charges in the US.
Mike Lynch, a controversial British tech tycoon recently acquitted of fraud in the US, is reportedly missing after a superyacht he was on sank off the coast of Sicily.
The 56-meter superyacht named “Bayesian” sank early Monday close to Porticello, Palermo, during bad weather.
One person has died and six others — including Lynch — are missing out of 12 guests and 10 crew who were on board, according to the Associated Press.
The remaining 15 people who were on board have been rescued, the BBC reported.
The area was hit by a strong storm and tornado about an hour before the boat sank, according to a statement by the City Council of Bagheria cited by CNBC News.
Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was among the people rescued, according to the BBC.
Another passenger who was rescued, Charlotte Emsley, described how she kept her one-year-old child alive by holding her head above the water.
“I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning,” she told reporters at la Repubblica, an Italian news outlet, according to a translation by the BBC.
“It was all dark. In the water, I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help, but all I could hear around me was the screams of others.”
Divers saw “corpses through the portholes” of the wreck during rescue efforts, said Salvo Cocina, the head of the Civil Protection of Sicily, Sky News reported.
They found the body of a man at a depth of 50 meters. Local media suggested it belonged to the vessel’s chef. Business Insider could not verify the claims.
The owner of the superyacht is Revtom Ltd, which is registered in the Isle of Man.
According to Reuters, the captain of a nearby boat and the owner of the Bayesian are among those missing.
A local fire department told CNBC News that “divers, a motorboat and a helicopter,” were helping with the search.
But Italian officials are baffled that they haven’t found the missing passengers by now.
“We’ve been searching all day with helicopters and boats, we’ve found nothing. That wouldn’t make sense, in this conditions we should have found something by now,” Francesco Venuto, a spokesperson for Sicily’s civil protection agency told Sky News, adding that they “must be there [in the boat].”
Lynch, the founder of British software company Autonomy, was acquitted of multibillion-dollar fraud charges by a San Francisco jury in June.
He was first extradited to the US last year over accusations that he artificially inflated the value of Autonomy to defraud Hewlett Packard, who purchased it in 2011 for $11 billion.
In November 2012, HP announced an $8.8 billion writedown related to the Autonomy acquisition, with $5 billion due to what it said were “accounting irregularities” that led HP to massively overpay for Autonomy.
Lynch, a former UK government advisor, always maintained his innocence. His lawyers called the charges a “travesty of justice” that “had no place in a US court.”
In an interview following his acquittal, published late last month, Lynch told The Times that he was excited at his shot at a second life, after fearing he would die in prison if he was convicted.
“I’d had to say goodbye to everything and everyone, because I didn’t know if I’d ever be coming back,” Lynch told the outlet. “If this had gone the wrong way, it would have been the end of life as I have known it in any sense.”
Lynch also told the Times his acquittal had made him more spiritual, leading him to begin considering what he called “Saint Peter questions.”
“So you arrive at the Pearly Gates before being dispatched to the elevator down to the basement, and you say to Saint Peter, ‘You know, just before I go, what was that all about? What was that?’ ” Lynch told the outlet.
The tech tycoon, who faced more than 20 years in prison if convicted, had been preparing to set up a campaign to help wrongly accused Britons in the US, according to The Telegraph.
Representatives for Mike Lynch did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.