Rescuers are still searching for six missing people after a luxury superyacht sank off the coast of Italy on Monday morning. Among them, two Americans, British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch and Morgan Stanley International chairman Jonathan Bloomer.
The 184-foot British-flagged Bayesian carrying foreign tourists capsized and sank off Sicily in bad weather. One man’s body was found and 15 people were rescued, including a 1-year-old girl, authorities said.
The Italian coast guard said the sailboat overturned sometime after 5 a.m. off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, where it was anchored. Ten crew members and 12 passengers, including British, American and Canadian nationalities were onboard.
“The fear is that the bodies got trapped inside the vessel,” Salvatore Cocina, head of civil protection in Sicily, told Reuters.
BRITISH TECH ENTREPRENEUR, AMERICANS AMONG MISSING AFTER YACHT SINKS OFF ITALIAN COAST, KILLING AT LEAST 1
The Bayesian was owned by Lynch’s wife, who survived the disaster, and other guests on the yacht included Lynch’s colleagues. The only body so far retrieved was that of the onboard chef Ricardo Thomas, an Antiguan citizen.
Those on the yacht were celebrating Lynch’s victory over fraud charges in the U.S., the Daily Mail reports.
He was acquitted on fraud charges by a San Francisco jury, ending more than a decade of legal battles stemming from the sale of his company to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
“I am elated with today’s verdict,” Lynch said in a statement following his acquittal. “I am looking forward to returning to the U.K. and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field.”
WHO IS MIKE LYNCH, THE BRITISH TECH ENTREPRENEUR MISSING AFTER YACHT SANK?
The missing include 59-year-old Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter; Bloomer and his wife; Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife.
“The biggest difficulty we have is due to the depth, which does not allow long times of intervention,” fire department diver Marco Tilotta told reporters. “We plan … to search centimeter by centimeter.”
Tilotta said the vessel, located 164-feet deep underwater, appeared to be intact and was lying on its right side. Divers had not ascertained whether the 246-feet-long mast had snapped somewhere along its length.
Bayesian was built in 2008 by Italian firm Perini Navi, as seen in footage taken in June 2021.
Morgan Stanley did not immediately respond to a FOX Business request for comment.
FOX Business’ Breck Dumas and Reuters contributed to this report.
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