Italian officials have launched a shipwreck and manslaughter investigation into the sinking of the luxury Bayesian yacht off the coast of Sicily that left tech tycoon Mike Lynch, his daughter Hannah and five other people dead.
Public prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio made the announcement at a press conference on Saturday, according to a translation.
The Bayesian superyacht sank in bad weather while moored around half a mile off the coast on Monday morning.
Mr Cartosio told the press conference: “The Termini Imerese prosecution has opened a case hypothesising the crime of shipwreck and of manslaughter but we are only at the initial stage of the inquiry so far.”
He added: “I have to emphasise that the development of the inquiry could actually be of any sort imaginable.”
Mr Cartosio said, through a translation provided by the BBC described the incident as a ‘very grave tragedy’.
He added: “These six persons who tried desperately to save themselves were finally retrieved.
“First of all, four of them. Jonathan Bloomer the banker, Christopher Morvillo the lawyer, and all four of them were retrieved from inside the yacht which was 50 metres down.
“Then, later, the other two were also retrieved.
“Michael Lynch on the 23rd, yesterday, and then the 18-year-old daughter of Michael Lynch, Hannah, was found yesterday morning.
“It is a very grave tragedy and in order to reduce the dimensions of the tragedy, we have called upon the co-operation of the firefighters, firefighting divers, who have shown incredible courage and skill, who carried out a very difficult mission indeed and have allowed us to inspect properly the wreck for bodies.”
The six bodies in the yacht were recovered from cabins on the left side of the vessel, the chief of the Palermo fire service said.
Girolamo Bentivoglio said specialised divers attempting to retrieve the bodies had to deal with “very little visibility due to the weather conditions” and were called in from across the country as part of a search-and-rescue operation which involved “some 70 people” each day.
He added: “The yacht obviously pinned to the right and obviously the (people) tried to go on the other side and then took refuge in their cabins.
“We found four or five bodies in the cabin on the left and there was another one in the third cabin on the left too, and obviously they were in the higher part of the wreck.
“Obviously, emergency procedures were implemented by the divers and obviously we installed cameras and involved further divers.
“And we involved obviously helicopter services and other surveillance cameras.”
The body of the yacht’s chef, Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, was recovered at the scene on Monday.
The other 15 people who had been on the yacht at the time, including Mr Lynch’s wife Angela Becares, were rescued from a liferaft after the £30million Bayesian sank.
