The Saga of a Tech Exec’s Sunken Yacht Simply Bought a Lot Extra Attention-grabbing

A bit of over a month in the past, the 184-foot yacht belonging to tech millionaire Mike Lynch abruptly sank. The boat had been anchored off the coast of Sicily, the place it had been parked for an evening of partying, when an sudden “freak storm” got here up within the waters close by. Inside 16 minutes, the vessel went down. Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter, his lawyer, and a number of other others, all drowned consequently.

The tragic incident instantly impressed suspicion as a result of weird timing of the yacht’s sinking. Lynch and his fellow vacationers had been aboard the boat to have fun Lynch’s current authorized victory: the tech government had just lately been found not guilty in a decade-spanning fraud case that concerned a multi-billion greenback deal to promote his software program firm to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. After years of preventing accusations of fraud associated to the deal, a U.S. court docket had—solely two months earlier than the tragic boating incident—acquitted the tech government of all fees associated to the case.

Now, in a twist that’s positive to rankle conspiracy theorists, CNN reports that the yacht, often known as the Bayesian, could comprise watertight safes that maintain “super-encrypted exhausting drives.” Lynch apparently didn’t belief cloud providers and, consequently, took encrypted drives with him every time he went crusing. These drives, in flip, could “comprise extremely delicate information tied to numerous Western intelligence providers,” the outlet experiences, citing 4 sources acquainted with the native police investigation.

To bolster this argument, CNN stresses Lynch’s high-level authorities connections, noting that he was “related to British, American and different intelligence providers by way of his numerous corporations” (Lynch was concerned with the cybersecurity business, which frequently works hand in glove with authorities businesses), and up to now, he served as an advisor to a number of British prime ministers, together with David Cameron and Theresa Could.

Authorities are actually attempting to grab and defend the sunken hard-drives. CNN experiences that police are stepping up safety and underwater surveillance across the sunken vessel, apparently fearing that it is likely to be focused by overseas governments (Russia and China are each talked about).

It’s an exceedingly bizarre twist to a narrative that has already had loads of bizarre twists. Living proof: Stephen Chamberlain, Lynch’s enterprise accomplice (and the co-defendant within the just lately concluded authorized proceedings), died the same day that Lynch’s boat sunk. Chamberlain had been struck by a automobile whereas jogging on August seventeenth and succumbed to his accidents two days later. Whereas this will likely sound like one thing straight out of Michael Clayton, it could additionally simply be a coincidence. The obvious driver of the automobile that hit Chamberlin is described as having been a 49-year-old lady who “remained on the scene” after police arrived.

Lynch’s software program firm, Autonomy, was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. When the deal went by way of, Lynch was serving as Autonomy’s CEO. Shortly after the deal went by way of, nonetheless, Lynch left the corporate, and the corporate’s operations rapidly unraveled. He was subsequently accused of inflating the worth of Autonomy within the interval earlier than it was bought to Hewlett-Packard. Lynch denied these fees and maintained that HP bungled the operations of the corporate after it was bought. After years spent in courts preventing the fees, an American court docket in the end agreed with Lynch’s story.

Lynch’s legal professional, Chris Morvillo, who helped him win the case in opposition to HP—additionally died, alongside along with his spouse, when the Bayesian sank. The couple had been celebrating the authorized victory alongside Lynch.