Faking Death, Murder, or the Power of the Elements? What is Known About the Shipwreck That Killed Billionaire Michael Lynch
In Italy, an investigation continues into the tragedy of a sunken superyacht that killed several people, including billionaire Mike Lynch. Initially, the main version was a sudden tornado, but the yacht sank too quickly. This gave rise to conspiracy theories related to the fraud case in which the billionaire was involved. Many are also confused by the fact that most of the crew survived, while six guests who were involved in the fraud case and the chef died. Spletnik looked into what is known about the sunken yacht and the causes of the tragedy.
What happened
On Monday, August 19, the superyacht Bayesian, sailing under the British flag, sank off the coast of Sicily. It was considered one of the largest sailing yachts in the world. Lynch was on it celebrating his victory in a fraud trial in which he was one of the defendants. The sinking occurred at about five in the morning local time, when the vessel was anchored near the port of Porticello. A storm began in the usually very calm sea and a waterspout formed, which is believed to have caused the sinking of the vessel. There were suggestions that the mast, which was too high for such a yacht, was to blame.
At the time of the crash, a Dutch ship was anchored near the sinking yacht. Thanks to the actions of its crew, 15 of the 22 people on the yacht were saved. A little later, the body of the deceased cook was found, and several people, including Lynch and his daughters, could not be found for several more days. Yesterday, August 21, it became known that Lynch and his daughter Hannah died, their bodies were found, but then the information that Hannah was found was denied. The bodies of the chairman of the board of Morgan Stanley International Jonathan Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and their wives were also found.
Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, who managed to escape, told La Repubblica that she and her husband woke up at 4 a.m. because the yacht suddenly tilted. It didn't scare them, but Angela decided to see what had happened. At that moment, glass began to break and panic broke out on the yacht.
Superyacht Bayesian was built in Italy by Perini Navi and was first launched in 2008. She was named after Thomas Bayes, an 18th-century English mathematician and clergyman who developed some of the basic principles of probability theory, which formed the basis of Mike Lynch’s PhD thesis. It’s not called a “superyacht” for nothing: she was around 56 metres long and had a 75 metre mast. She had six luxurious bedrooms for 12 guests, with another ten berths for crew and staff. The yacht was beneficially owned by Angela Bacares, Mike Lynch’s wife. She was last refitted in 2020.
Who is Mike Lynch
The future billionaire was born in Ilford (Essex) in 1965, the son of a nurse and a fireman. In 1976, Lynch won a scholarship to Bancroft's School in Woodford, and then entered Christ's College, where he studied natural sciences. His scientific field is signal processing, communications research, he defended his dissertation on the topic "Adaptive methods of signal processing and connectionist models". Already in the late 80s, Lynch created his first own company - Lynett Systems Ltd, associated with the recording industry. In 1996, he founded the software development company Autonomy Corporation. The company was very successful and profitable. In 2006, Lynch received the Order of the British Empire for services to entrepreneurship, then became one of the members of the BBC Board of Directors. In 2011, Lynch became a member of the Advisory Council on Science and Technology under Prime Minister David Cameron.
Lynch was called the British Bill Gates, having founded several successful tech companies: in addition to Autonomy, he founded Invoke Capital and Darktrace, which was recently sold to investment giant Thoma Bravo for $5.3 billion. Employees considered Lynch a tough businessman who was obsessed with Bond films: the company’s conference rooms were named after villains from the franchise, and the company’s courtyard housed a giant aquarium filled with piranhas.
In 2015, Lynch's net worth was estimated at $1 billion, according to Forbes. Not much is known about his personal life: he was married to Angela Bacares and raised two daughters.
Fraud case
Lynch was accused of inflating the value of the software company Autonomy, which he sold to Hewlett-Packard (HP) for $11.16 billion. Lynch earned $650 million on the deal, but HP later accused him of fraud. The entrepreneur's opponents claimed that the value of Autonomy was greatly inflated at the time of the sale. Lynch was charged in 2015, and his trial began three years later: Lynch was required to pay $5 billion in compensation. If convicted, he could have spent up to 25 years in prison. However, during a retrial in June 2024, 59-year-old Lynch was acquitted: all charges against him were dropped after he spent more than a year under de facto house arrest.
Sudden Death of a Partner and Conspiracy Theories
Lynch invited people from the law firm Clifford Chance and his own company Invoke Capital, who were witnesses in the case, to celebrate the successful completion of the trial. His wife Angela Bacares and 18-year-old daughter Hannah were also on board. Incidentally, the day before the departure, one of Lynch's partners, former Autonomy top manager Stephen Chamberlain, who was also a defendant in the case, was hit by a car and died. This did not stop the other participants in the case from celebrating their victory, and they went on a short voyage off the coast of Sicily: all the passengers on the yacht were somehow connected to the fraud case.
The details of the incident – the strange death of Lynch's partner, the fact that many of the participants in the fraud case were gathered on the yacht, and the speed with which the vessel sank – gave rise to conspiracy theories, with many discussing how such accidents do not happen.
It also became known that Lynch was connected with the Israeli intelligence service Mossad. This was reported by TASS, citing data from the Nova agency. According to the agency, the computer security company Darktrace, which Lynch owned, cooperated with the Israeli special services. In particular, with its help they could determine the location of the leaders of the Palestinian movement Hamas. In addition, it is known that in March 2023, an IT department was created in Darktrace, which protected leading US government agencies, including the Pentagon, from cyberattacks.
Conspiracy theories also include the suggestion that the billionaire was simply faking his death to protect himself from prosecution after the fraud case or from Hamas supporters. It has been suggested that Lynch and his confidants may have been using life rafts or underwater capsules attached to the yacht at the time of the crash.
There were witnesses who claimed that the vessel sank too quickly for a yacht of its class. Thus, Karsten Borner, the captain of a nearby sailboat, who was the first to come to the rescue on Monday, told the Guardian: "I have never seen a vessel of this size go down so quickly. Within minutes there was nothing left of it." In addition, many note that none of the boats or yachts that were nearby were damaged, perhaps indicating the local nature of the incident.
Porticello fisherman Fabio Cefalu, who was one of the first to try to help the Bayesian, said he arrived at the port to fish at 3:30 a.m. and saw the first flashes of lightning and a mini-tornado hit the boat. He said the crew simply did not have time to do anything.
Nicola Romana, an expert in transport and tourism law at the Faculty of Economic Sciences at the University of Palermo, told La Repubblica: "Tragedies at sea are almost always caused by human error. In this case, a catastrophic event also played a role. The crew of a vessel of this size must be prepared for anything." Experts also note that vessels of this class are staffed by the best professionals, who must know what to do in the event of a storm and what measures to take to avoid a shipwreck.
In addition, Giovanni Costantino, CEO of Sea Group (the parent company of Perini Navi, which built Bayesian), said that such sailing yachts are considered "the safest in the world" due to their design. He called the vessels of this class "unsinkable": "This incident seems incredible both from a technical point of view and from a factual point of view."
Search operation and investigative versions
Divers are currently working at the wreck site, but they are hampered by the debris cluttering the cabin. They also have to surface every 10 minutes, as the shipwreck lies at a depth of about 45 meters. Marco Tilotta, captain of the Palermo firefighting diving team, said that retrieving the bodies poses many challenges: "The biggest problem is the depth, which does not allow us to start working immediately. We have to take into account that when we go underwater, we have three minutes to descend and eight minutes to work with the debris. Then we have to come up. Then there is the problem of accessing the ship with all the things inside and the fact that the boat is at an angle of 90 degrees. We have not yet entered the boat. We plan to do so soon and inspect every inch of the ship."
Investigators are looking into whether the crew may have mistakenly left hatches open, which would explain how the ship filled with water so quickly. If it turns out that the crew failed to take safety precautions given the bad weather forecast, they could face criminal charges.
According to meteorological observations, the day before the tragedy, the air temperature reached 33 degrees Celsius: probably in order to escape the heat, the captain and crew did not close the hatches and doors. In addition, taking into account the weather forecast, the crew members were required to provide passengers with life jackets and conduct instructions in case of unforeseen situations.