Mike Lynch, who was regularly described in U.K. media as “Britain’s Bill Gates,” was cleared of fraud charges in a blockbuster U.S. trial earlier this summer. Sources told CNBC on Monday that his wife, Angela Bacares, has been rescued. Italian news agency ANSA identified his daughter, missing alongside her father, as Hannah, 18.
Just days before Lynch went missing, his co-defendant, Stephen Chamberlain, died after being “fatally struck by a car” while out running on Saturday, his lawyer Gary Lincenberg told NBC News in an emailed statement. Reuters reported that Chamberlain was a former vice president of finance at Autonomy, Lynch’s company at the center of the trial.
The sailing vacation that ended in tragedy appeared to be something of a celebration after Lynch’s acquittal — Morvillo was one of Lynch’s U.S. lawyers and Bloomer testified in his defense.
“We are deeply shocked and saddened by this tragic event. Our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular our Chair, Jonathan Bloomer, and his wife Judy, who are among the missing,” Aki Hussain, the head of insurance company Hiscox, told NBC News in an emailed statement.
Judy Bloomer was described as “a brilliant champion for women’s health and medical research” by The Eve Appeal, a British cancer charity, in an emailed statement to NBC News.
A Clifford Chance representative said they could neither comment on or confirm the news that Morvillo was missing. He is a lawyer based in New York, according to the company’s website.
The coast guard said in a statement Monday that the ship’s cook had died. It did not give his nationality. Reuters identified him as Antiguan citizen Ricardo Thomas.
One of the survivors, identified as Charlotte Emsley, 35, told the Italian news agency ANSA that she had momentarily lost hold of her 1-year-old daughter, Sofia, in the water but managed to retrieve her and hold her up over the waves until a lifeboat inflated and they were pulled to safety.
Built by Italian shipbuilder Perini Navi in 2008, the U.K.-registered, Bayesian can carry 12 guests and a crew of up to 10, according to online specialist yacht sites.
The yacht’s nearly 250-foot mast is the tallest aluminum sailing mast in the world, according to CharterWorld Luxury Yacht Charters.
Luca Mercalli, Italian climatologist and president of the country’s meteorological society, told Reuters that the storm could have involved a waterspout, essentially a tornado over water, or a downburst, a more frequent phenomenon that doesn’t involve the rotation of the air.
Storms and heavy rainfall have swept Italy in recent days after weeks of scorching heat.
“The sea surface temperature around Sicily was around 30 degrees Celsius (86 Fahrenheit), which is almost 3 degrees more than normal,” Mercalli said. “This creates an enormous source of energy that contributes to these storms.”
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