Rome CNN —
Specialistdivers surveying the wreckageof the$40 million superyacht that sank off Sicilyin August, killing seven people including British tech tycoon Mike Lynch,have asked for heightened security to guard the vessel,over concerns that sensitive data locked in its safes may interest foreign governments, multiple sources told CNN.
Italian Prosecutors who have opened up a criminal probe into multiple charges of manslaughter and negligent shipwreck think the 56-meter (184-foot) yacht, the Bayesian, may containhighly sensitive datatied toa number of Westernintelligence services, four sources familiar with the investigation and salvage operation said.
Lynchwas associatedwithBritish, American andother intelligence servicesthrough his various companies,including the cyber security companyhe founded,Darktrace.
That companywassold to Chicago-based private equity firmThoma Bravo in April. Lynch,whose wife’s company Revtom Limited owned the vessel,was also an adviser to British prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May on science, technology and cyber security during their tenures, according to British government and public Darktrace records.
The sunken vessel, lyingon the seabed at a depth ofsome 50 meters (164 feet), is thought tohavewatertight safescontainingtwo super-encrypted hard drivesthat holdhighly classified information, including passcodes and other sensitive data, an officialinvolved in the salvage plans,who asked not to be named,told CNN. Specialist divers with remote cameras have searched the boat extensively.
Initially, local law enforcementfearedthat would-be thieves might try to reach the wreckage to find expensive jewelry and other objects of value still onboard the yacht, according to divers with the Fire Brigade who spoke with CNN. Now they are concerned that the wreckage, expected to be raisedin the coming weeksas part of the criminal investigation into the tragedy, will also be of interest to foreign governments, including Russia and China. They have requested that the yachtbe guarded closely,both above water and with underwater surveillance.
“A formal request has been accepted and implemented for additional security of the wreckage until it can be raised,” an official with the Sicilian civil protection authority who is assisting with the criminal investigation confirmed to CNN.
Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, American attorney Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda, British banker Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy,andthe yacht’s onboard chef Recaldo Thomas died when the ship sank in aviolent stormin the early hours of the morning.
Preliminary results fromautopsies suggest that the Bloomer and Morvillo couples died of suffocation or “dry drowning” when the oxygen in an air bubble in a sleeping cabin ran out. Autopsy results for Lynch and his daughter were less clear.
The chef, whose body was found outside the vessel, diedbydrowning, the coroner said. Toxicology reports on the dead have not yet been released, but none had suffered any physical injuries when the boat went down.
Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares and 14 others survived, including the captain James Cutfield, who, along with adeckhandand the yacht’s engine room manager, is under investigation for multiple manslaughter and causing a negligent shipwreck. They have all been allowed to leave Italy.
Some of the 15 survivors, of whomninewere crew members andsixwere passengers, including a 1-year-old girl, reportedly told prosecutors that Lynch “did not trust cloud services” and always kept data drives in a secure compartment of the yacht wherever he sailed, a source with the prosecutor’s office told CNN. None of the crew or passengers who survived the incident were tested for drugs oralcohol because they were in a “state of shock,” authorities said during anewsconferencefollowing the recovery of the bodies.
Morvillo represented Lynch when he was acquitted in a criminal fraud case in the US in June tied to the takeover by Hewlett Packard of his software company Autonomy, andsurvivors told investigators thatthe cruise was a celebration of that acquittal, according to theassistant prosecutor, Raffaele Cammarano. Though Lynch was acquitted of any criminal wrongdoing in the US, Hewlett Packard has indicated it will not drop its bid to collect a $4 billion civil payout from Lynch’s estate, awarded by a British court in 2022.
In what appears to bea tragic coincidence, Lynch’s business partner Stephen Chamberlain — who was his co-defendant in the US fraud case and the former chief operating officer of Darktrace — died on August 19, the same day the Bayesian sank,after being hit by a car while out jogging two days earlier.A spokesperson for the prosecutor’s office told CNN that Cutfield told them Lynch had learned of Chamberlain’s serious condition and had planned to cut the cruise short to return to the UK to see his business partner, who had been on life support.
The Bayesian sank a few hours before Chamberlain died in the hospital, his lawyer said. Lynch would not have known of his partner’s death, and Chamberlain was in a coma so would not have known about the shipwreck, Chamberlain’s legal counsel said.
Local prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio said no personal effects, including computers, jewelry or Lynch’s hard drives had been recovered from the vessel. However,the onboard hard drives and surveillance cameras tied to the yacht’s navigation system have been brought to investigators to determine if there is any usable data that mightindicatehow the yacht sank within 16 minutes of the storm hitting. The vessel did not have a traditional black box or voyage data recorder to record navigation data or audio on the bridge.
After divers completesurveys of the wreck this week, they will make suggestions for how to best raise the 473-tonvessel without spilling any of the 18,000 liters of oil and fuel still onboard,and how to make sure any sensitive data does not fall into the wrong hands. The costs of raising the ship will fall to its owner, Lynch’s widow, as is mandated by Italian maritime law.
This story has been updated to correct the number of people killed in the sinking
