'British Bill Gates' Mike Lynch Missing in Superyacht Crash in Italy

Billionaire tech mogul Mike Lynch, 59, who has been dubbed the "British Bill Gates", has gone missing after his superyacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily, Italy, according to reports from a number of publications, including The Guardian and Sky News.

In addition to him, several other people are also missing, including Lynch's 18-year-old daughter. Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, was rescued. "We searched all day, using boats and helicopters, but we found nothing," a civil defense spokesman said. He noted that if the missing people had been at sea, they would have been found. The yacht itself is at a depth of 50 meters, and, according to rescuers, the bodies of the victims are visible through the portholes.

The yacht sank on the morning of August 19 off the coast of Palermo in southern Italy. The cause of the sinking was a tornado: the wind broke the ship's mast, causing it to lose stability. There were 12 guests and ten crew members on the ship at the time, 15 people were saved, many of whom required hospitalization. One person died.

The 56-metre superyacht belonged to Lynch himself, who acquired it in 2008.

Mike Lynch is one of the founders of the British software company Autonomy, which has earned him the nickname "the British Bill Gates." In June, Lynch was cleared of fraud charges that arose after the sale of Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011: the billionaire himself and the company's top managers were accused of falsifying accounting reports. And in 2006, the businessman was awarded the Order of the British Empire for services to entrepreneurship. In 2015, Forbes estimated his fortune at $1 billion.