Who is Mike Lynch, the ‘British Bill Gates’ who disappeared in the sinking of the luxury yacht in Sicily?

Tech mogul Mike Lynch among missing in yacht sinking off Sicily.

Tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, founder of software firm Autonomy and once known in Britain as the ‘British Bill Gates’, is one of the people missing when a luxury yacht sank on Monday off the coast of Palermo on the Italian island of Sicily due to bad weather.

Although there is no official list of missing persons, British media such as the BBC have reported that Lynch, 59, is among those missing in the shipwreck, while his wife, Angela Bacares, is among the survivors. The entrepreneur was acquitted last June of fraud charges in the United States for the sale of his software company to the multinational Hewlett-Packard (HP) for more than 11 billion dollars.

The yacht, about 50 metres long, sank, apparently hit by a tornado, while it was anchored half a mile off the port of Porticello, with more than twenty passengers and crew of various nationalities: English, Canadian, American, New Zealander, and one Irishman.

According to authorities, the Bayesian was on a luxury cruise that left from Rotterdam, Netherlands. Before the accident, the ship crossed the Strait of Gibraltar last week and stopped in Milazzo before arriving in Porticello last Sunday.

In 2009, this vessel, then known as Salute when flying the Dutch flag, won the ‘Superyacht’ award for best sailing yacht. Bayesian ranked in the top 5% for overall length – length of the boat – among superyachts in the world, standing out as one of only 31 sailing yachts in the 55-60 metre range.

Initial efforts in the area have managed to rescue 15 people alive, including a one-year-old girl. However, the search operation launched by the emergency services has so far led to the location of one body, identified as the cook of the boat.

Divers are working in the sea to search for the missing. (Vigili del Fuoco/REUTERS)

Six other people are still missing, including Lynch, and authorities suspect they may be aboard the sunken boat, according to the AdnKronos agency. The yacht was flying a British flag and Italian authorities have identified most of the victims as British. The British Foreign Office is already in contact with the Italian government to provide assistance.

Last June, Lynch was acquitted of fraud charges related to the 2011 sale of his software company, Autonomy, to the multinational Hewlett-Packard (HP) for more than $11 billion.

The jury’s not guilty verdict after two days of deliberations and three months of trial represented a severe defeat for US prosecutors, acquitting Lynch and the company’s former vice president of finance, Stephen Chamberlain, of the charges.

In this regard, the former CFO of Autonomy, Sushovan Hussain, had been found guilty of fraud in 2018 and subsequently sentenced to five years in prison, from which he was released last January. The trial against Lynch began last March, ten months after the extradition of the British businessman, who had pleaded not guilty to charges of electronic fraud, securities fraud and conspiracy, for which he faced a sentence of up to 25 years in prison, for which he claimed to be a scapegoat for HP for the fiasco of the acquisition and subsequent management of Autonomy.

Since being extradited to the United States in May 2023, Mike Lynch had been forced to live under house arrest and 24-hour surveillance in San Francisco.

HP suffered multi-billion dollar losses in its 2012 financial year after recording write-downs of $8.8 billion (€8.084 billion) in connection with “serious accounting errors, information failures and direct misrepresentations” at Autonomy Corporation.

In this regard, the US multinational then informed the UK Serious Fraud Office and the US Department of Justice, as well as the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), about “accounting errors, failures and misrepresentations” at Autonomy before and in connection with its purchase.

News with information from Europa Press