An Italian prosecutor has opened a manslaughter investigation into the deaths of London-Irish tech magnate Mike Lynch and six other people who were killed when a luxury yacht sank off Sicily this week.
The public prosecutor’s office of Termini Imerese, headed by Ambrogio Cartosio, announced the investigation, saying it was not aimed at any individual person. Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, was among those who died when the family’s 56-metre-long (184-foot) boat, the Bayesian, capsized during a fierce, predawn storm on Monday off Porticello, near Palermo.
Fifteen people survived, including Lynch’s wife, whose company owned the Bayesian, and the yacht’s captain, James Cutfield.
Cutfield and the other survivors have been questioned by the coast guard on behalf of prosecutors. None of them have commented publicly on how the ship went down.
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Mr Lynch (59) had invited friends to join him on the yacht to celebrate his acquittal in June in a US fraud trial.
Among those who died in the wreck were Mr Lynch’s lawyer Chris Morvillo and Jonathan Bloomer, a Morgan Stanley banker who had appeared as a character witness in the case on his behalf.
Hannah Lynch’s body was discovered on Friday by divers who scoured the submerged vessel for the past five days. The five other dead passengers were recovered on Wednesday and Thursday, while the body of the only crew member who died, on-board chef Recaldo Thomas, was found on Monday.
Public prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio made the announcement at a press conference on Saturday. He told a press conference: “The Termini Imerese prosecution has opened a case hypothesising the crime of shipwreck and of manslaughter but we are only at the initial stage of the inquiry so far.”
He added: “I have to emphasise that the development of the inquiry could actually be of any sort imaginable.”
Prosecutor for the case, Raffaele Cammarano, was asked how it is possible that most of the crew managed to survive. According to a translation, he said: “We have tried to find out maximum information possible from the crew members or the survivors – all I would say is that the incident happened really, really suddenly.
“The inquiry will begin with the facts of the shipwreck – that is all I can say at the moment.”
All of the bodies on-board the sunken yacht were found in a single cabin which “was not theirs”, he told reporters.
Cammarano said: “The bodies were found in a cabin which was not theirs but this doesn’t give us any kind of certainty about what happened. We have no idea of the reasons for their all being found in the same cabin.”
Cammarano was also asked about whether there is a black box and if the hatches were left open.
“We haven’t got exact information about the black box. It was extremely difficult to get inside some of the cabins and the yacht itself,” he said.
“The first phase of this inquiry will certainly concentrate on confirming the presence of such things and the retrieval of the bodies.
“We can’t reply with any certainty about that yet.”
He added: “We can’t reveal anything at this stage but the facts will be confirmed by the later search amongst the wreckage.”
A leading coastguard official said he could not confirm how long it would take to retrieve the shipwreck of the sunken yacht, adding that recovering the fuel tanks was a “priority for us because it has environmental knock-on effects”.
Asked about the timeline of recovering the wreck, maritime director of western Sicily rear admiral Raffaele Macauda of the coastguard said, through a translation provided by the BBC: “Well, you know, we’re talking about a shipwreck at 50 metres down.
“Everything depends on the availability of the owners and the time frame of the retrieval of the wreck and of course all that has to be submitted to the port authorities and in parallel of course there will be the inquiry results and it’s only really then that we will be able to authorise the operation.
“I can’t say, like some experts who have already spoken on the subject, that it will be eight weeks.
“But the preliminary phase which we requested was to retrieve the wreck and after that we can proceed with the rest. There are specialised companies after all who can proceed with getting up the fuel tanks, for example, first, so that’s a priority for us because it has environmental knock-on effects and then we’ll work out a proper time frame – a plan with a time frame.”
Mr Lynch’s family was devastated and in shock, a spokesperson for the family said on Friday, in their first public comments since the yacht sank.
“Their thoughts are with everyone affected by the tragedy. They would like to sincerely thank the Italian coastguard, emergency services and all those who helped in the rescue,” a statement said. “Their one request now is that their privacy be respected at this time of unspeakable grief.”
The sinking has puzzled naval marine experts who say a boat like the Bayesian, built by Italian high-end yacht manufacturer Perini, should have withstood the storm and in any case should not have sunk as quickly as it did.
Giovanni Costantino, chief executive of The Italian Sea Group, which owns Perini, said the shipwreck was the result of a string of “indescribable, unreasonable errors” made by the crew, and ruled out any design or construction failings. – Reuters/PA