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Italian authorities believe it is “extremely unlikely” that British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and five other passengers who went missing after their luxury yacht capsized off the coast of Sicily are still alive.
Police told the Financial Times that rescue efforts in the Sicily port of Santa Flavia were halted at around 11.30pm on Tuesday and were due to resume early on Wednesday. Helicopters and motorboats had earlier searched the water.
Divers are trying to search for the missing, including Mr Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter and Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of insurance group Hiscox & Morgan Stanley International.
“We can’t say never, but as time goes on the hope fades that if they were still inside the vessel they could have survived,” Italian coast guard spokesman Vincenzo Zagarola said.
Lynch’s yacht, the Baysian, sank in about 165 feet (50 meters) of water early Monday morning due to bad weather, the Coast Guard said.
Of the 22 passengers and crew on board, 15 were rescued, one was later found dead, and six remain missing, including Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacalez.
Divers’ efforts to access the yacht have been hampered by furniture blocking the accessway.
Zagarola said they had been able to find an initial passage into the hull but had not yet been able to access the entire vessel. “It’s an obstacle course to find a way in,” he added.
He said rescue teams had so far found “no evidence” that there were any passengers on the yacht.
The UK Maritime Accidents Investigation Branch will send a team of four investigators to Italy to carry out a preliminary investigation into the sinking of the British-flagged superyacht, the agency said on Tuesday, after which the MAIB will decide whether to open a formal investigation.
Lynch, Autonomy’s former CEO, was acquitted of criminal charges by a San Francisco jury in June, vindicating the 59-year-old entrepreneur after a 12-year legal battle over the company’s 2011 sale to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion.
Among the passengers on Lynch’s 56-metre yacht were members of his legal team and their families, who had been invited on the trip to celebrate their court victory.
Christopher Morvillo, the lawyer for the Clifford Chance law firm who represented Lynch, is still missing. Ira Ronald, another Clifford Chance lawyer, has been rescued.
Monday’s yacht incident came on the same day that Stephen Chamberlain, Lynch’s co-defendant in a U.S. fraud case, was pronounced dead after being hit by a car in Cambridgeshire, England.
Chamberlain, Autonomy’s former vice president of finance, became chief operating officer of Darktrace, a cybersecurity company co-founded by Lynch in 2013.
Darktrace said it was “deeply saddened” by the “tragic passing” of someone who “made a significant contribution to the early team.”
“Steve was much loved by his colleagues and leaves behind many friends at Darktrace. Our thoughts are with his wife Karen and the rest of his family at this difficult time,” the spokesman said.
Additional reporting by Victor Mallet in London and Marianna Giusti in Santa Flavia
