2024-08-25 10:28:34
The captain, crew and surviving passengers are under no legal obligation to remain in Italy pending the investigation, but authorities expect them to cooperate with investigators
Italian prosecutors have opened a manslaughter investigation into the death of British tech mogul Mike Lynch. He and six others died after his luxury yacht sank in a heavy storm off the island of Sicily earlier this week.
Ambrogio Cartozio, the head of the public prosecutor’s office in the city of Termini Immerse, said that although the yacht was at the center of a sudden weather phenomenon, it was also likely that crimes such as “negligent homicide” and “causing a shipwreck due to negligence” were involved.
So far, the investigation is not focused on a specific person, he specified, quoted by BTA.
Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter Hannah was also among the victims of the sinking of the 56-metre Baysian yacht, which was caught in a heavy storm at dawn on Monday off Porticello, near Palermo. Among those killed in the wreck was Lynch’s lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife, as well as Jonathan Bloomer, a Morgan Stanley banker who testified against Lynch in a New York case with his wife. The yacht’s chef also died.
Fifteen people survived, including the captain and Mike Lynch’s wife.
The incident could turn out to be even more painful if the investigation shows it was caused “by behavior that was not consistent with the responsibilities that everyone has to take in shipping,” Cartosio said.
Captain James Cutfield and the other survivors were questioned this week by authorities. None of them have publicly commented on how the yacht, owned by Lynch’s company, sank.
Raffaele Camarano, another prosecutor involved in the investigation, said that when authorities questioned Cutfield, he was “extremely cooperative.”
The sinking of the yacht puzzled maritime experts, who said a vessel like the Baysian, built by high-end Italian yacht builder Perini, should have weathered the storm and in any case should not have sunk as quickly as it did. has happened.
Retrieving Baysian from the sea will help investigators determine what happened, but the operation is likely to be complicated and expensive. The yacht lies apparently intact at a depth of 50 meters below sea level.
The chief executive of the Italian maritime group that owns the Perini, Giovanni Constantino, told Reuters this week that the shipwreck was the result of a series of “inexplicable, unreasonable mistakes” made by the crew, and ruled out any design flaws or the structure of the vessel.
Camarano said the weather event that affected the ship was most likely a very strong downwind, which is an intense but relatively common occurrence at sea, and not a tornado. According to him, during the storm, all the passengers were probably asleep, which is why they were unable to save themselves.
The head of the Palermo Coast Guard, Raffaele Macauda, said there was no specific ban on the ship being anchored where it was hit by the storm, as weather bulletins at the time did not report a major storm threat for the wider area of the southwestern part of the Tyrrhenian Sea.
Cartosio did not rule out the possibility of starting an investigation against a specific person, even before the vessel was brought to the surface. He said the captain, crew and passengers have no legal obligation to stay in Italy until the investigation is over, but authorities expect them to cooperate with investigators.
The prosecutor said it was not possible to test the survivors for alcohol or drugs because they were in a state of shock and needed treatment for their injuries.
In the sunken yacht, the bodies of the dead were found in the cabins on her left side, where passengers may have tried to gasp for air, Palermo fire chief Girolamo Bentivolio Fiandra said at a news conference today.