Ben Pawlowski
ITALIAN prosecutors have launched an official investigation into the Mallorca-based captain of the Bayesian yacht which sank off the coast of Sicily last week, killing Mike Lynch, a tech tycoon known as the ‘British Bill Gates’, and six others.
James Cutfield, a 51-year-old New Zealander and captain of the €35million Bayesian superyacht, will be interrogated by investigators on Tuesday regarding his role in last Monday’s tragic sinking.
The Adnkronos news agency and the Italian daily Corriere della Sera reported this Monday that Cutfield, who survived the wreck alongside eight other crew members, is under investigation for manslaughter and shipwreck.
The reports claim that Cutfield was spoken to for two hours by investigators on Sunday, the second time in a week in which he has been interviewed.
It is understood that no other crew members are currently under investigation.
Under Italian law, being placed under investigation does not imply guilt, although maritime law states that a captain holds full responsibility for the boat, the crew and all on board.
The 56-metre-long British-flagged Bayesian and its crew were based in Palma, Mallorca prior to the sinking.
The superyacht suddenly sank 50 metres to the seabed last Monday after it was struck by a strong storm and freak tornado whilst anchored off the Italian coast.
The incident claimed the lives of eight people, including Mike Lynch, a 59-year-old billionaire tech tycoon who had been sailing across the Mediterranean to celebrate his recent acquittal in a major US fraud trial over the $11bn sale of the tech company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard, from which Lynch raked in an estimated $800m.
Prosecutors alleged that Lynch had cooked the books at Autonomy and overvalued his company by more than $5bn, although both Lynch and his former vice-president of finance, Stephen Chamberlain, were found not guilty of all charges – just 0.4% of US federal trials end in acquital.
However, since then both men have found unfortunate ends – Lynch was killed in the yachting accident on the same week that Chamberlain was fatally struck by a vehicle whilst running in Cambridgeshire.
Lynch’s daughter Hannah; Recaldo Thomas, one of the yacht’s chefs; Jonathan Bloomer, the Morgan Stanley International chairman, and his wife Judy; and Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda also lost their lives in the sinking.
The six surviving passengers, all of whom are British, have since returned to London via private jet.
Guilty as hell. It’s obvious that he arranged for the tornado to hit the yacht.