Italian prosecutors have placed under investigation the captain of the superyacht that sank off Sicily last week in a storm, killing British tech magnate Mike Lynch and six other people, a judicial source said on Monday.
James Cutfield (51), a New Zealand national, is being investigated for manslaughter and shipwreck, the source said, confirming earlier reports by Italian media.
Being placed under investigation in Italy does not imply guilt and does not mean formal charges will necessarily follow. Notices to people under investigation need to be sent out before authorities can carry out the autopsies on the bodies of the dead.
The decision was made after Mr Cutfield was interrogated for a second time. Reuters has been unable to contact Mr Cutfield.
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It is still unclear whether other members of the crew or other people will also be put under investigation along with the captain.
The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56m (184ft) yacht, was carrying 22 people when it capsized and sank on Monday within minutes of being hit by a predawn storm while anchored off northern Sicily.
Fifteen people survived, including Mr Lynch’s wife, whose company owned the Bayesian. Mr Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, was among those who died.
While the yacht had been hit by a sudden meteorological event, it was plausible that crimes of multiple manslaughter and causing a shipwreck through negligence had been committed, the head of the public prosecutor’s office of Termini Imerese, Ambrogio Cartosio, said on Saturday.
Maritime law gives a captain full responsibility for the ship, crew, and all on board.
Mr Cutfield and his eight surviving crew members have made no public comment yet on the disaster.
“The Bayesian was built to go to sea in any weather,” Franco Romani, a nautical architect who was part of the team that designed it told daily La Stampa in an interview published on Monday. He said the yacht could have taken on water from a side hatch that was left open.
The wreckage sits at a depth of 50m in the bay of Porticello, which is under surveillance by Italian authorities. Work to recover it is not expected to start until October.
Mr Cartosio said: “It’s in the interests of the owners and managers of the ship to salvage it,” adding “they have assured their full co-operation.”
Officials suggested that passengers who died were probably asleep, “whereas the others who survived weren’t”.
The dead, alongside Mr Lynch and his daughter, were the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas; Morgan Stanley International’s bank chairman, Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy; and Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda. – Agencies