AFP
‘British Bill Gates’ among the missing in the sinking of an Italian yacht
British tech magnate Mike Lynch is among six people missing from the wreck of a luxury superyacht that sank with 22 passengers and crew on board, surprised by a storm, between Sunday and Monday near Palermo in southern Italy. long sailing boat, called “Bayesian” and flying British flag, sank off the coast of Porticello, a coastal town about 15 km east of Palermo (Sicily), at about 5:00 (03:00 GMT) Monday after a strong storm, the Coast Guard explained. In the middle of the night, violent winds and a true deluge swept the coast and caused material damage to beach establishments: according to several media, this area was crossed by a waterspout, a rotating column of air. water Twelve passengers and ten crew members were on board the yacht, the majority of British nationalities. Among them, the tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, nicknamed “the British Bill Gates”, missing, told AFP the director of the Sicilian Civil Protection, Salvo Cocina – “Many screamed” – This businessman 59-year-old founder of the software publisher Autonomy. , is one of the most famous British tech entrepreneurs. His daughter Hannah is also missing, but his wife Angela Bacares was rescued and admitted to a local hospital with minor injuries, an AFP correspondent noted in total. British, American and Canadian nationalities. The body of one of the seven missing was later found in the wreckage of the yacht The British owner of the yacht, Camper & Nicholsons, a 35-year-old British passenger on the yacht, who was with her husband, said she lost her one- year-old daughter “for two seconds” in the water before she fetched. her. “I immediately hugged her amid the fury of the waves. Many were screaming. Fortunately the lifeboat was inflated and 11 of us climbed into her. The woman and her baby were hospitalized but are out of danger. Among the other survivors, mostly British, were also two French-British people, a Sri Lankan, a New Zealander and an Irishman, informed the media in calm sea searches involving a helicopter and divers around the wreck of the boat, located at a depth of 50 m. – Waterspout – According to media reports found the sailboat, which had dropped anchor about 700 meters from the port of Porticello, found itself in the path of a water spout, a phenomenon increasingly observed in Europe in recent years.” We were there, the first to help, but we didn’t find anyone in the sea, we only found cushions and the remains of the boat, we immediately called the port,” said AFP Fabio Cefalù, a fisherman who saw the disturbance approaching “around 03 :30. “. “This boat was lit about 04.30, it was no longer there (… A normal holiday spent happily at sea turned into a tragedy”, said a witness, quoted by Ansa. In recent years, Mike Lynch had mainly been talked about for trial in a case of fraud in connection with the sale of Autonomy software to the US group HP for $11 billion in 2011. HP had accused Autonomy of falsifying its accounts, specifically accusing Mike Lynch of artificially inflating the company’s reported revenue, revenue growth and margins In 2023, he was extradited from Britain to the United States to stand trial in this case but was acquitted in June after a trial in San Francisco.cmk-ljm-.gab/bds