Italian Sea Group Says It Holds No Liability In Sinking Of Mike Lynch’s Luxury Yacht That Killed 7

The Italian Sea Group has declared that it holds no responsibility for the deadly sinking of the “Bayesian”, a superyacht worth $40 million that killed British tech billionaire Mike Lynch and six others.

The CEO of Italian Sea Group, Giovanni Costantino, says that the company acquired Perini Navi, the yacht’s original builder, without taking on any liabilities from the brand’s previous operations.

Perini Navi, a luxury yacht builder owned by the Milan-listed Italian Sea Group, built the 56-meter yacht equipped with the world’s tallest aluminium mast at 75 meters in 2008.

The vessel tragically sank off the coast of Sicily in August after it encountered a violent storm, killing seven people onboard, including Lynch, a prominent figure in the British tech industry and his 18-year-old daughter, Hannah.

Giovanni Costantino spoke about the tragic incident during a presentation for financial analysts, explaining that the 2021 acquisition of the Perini Navi through a bankruptcy auction did not carry forward responsibilities for the actions of its previous management.

Costantino said that the Italian Sea Group took over only the assets and had no legal obligations for prior Perini Navi activities.

Since then, an Italian prosecutor has initiated a manslaughter investigation to determine the cause of the deadly sinking and who is responsible for it.

The superyacht was carrying 22 people, of which 12 were guests and 10 were staff members during the incident. Among those, 15 were rescued, and 7 were missing, who were later declared dead when their body was found after extensive search operations.

Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, the yacht’s owner, was among the 15 people rescued.

Mike invited his family and friends aboard his yacht to celebrate his recent acquittal in a U.S. fraud case. He founded Autonomy, a software company he sold to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.

The deal became one of Silicon Valley’s most well-known fraud cases, with Lynch spending years in court to defend his reputation. He was acquitted in a San Francisco court this past June.

References: Reuters, Tribune

Source: Maritime Shipping News