A little over a month ago, tech billionaire Mike Lynch’s 184-foot yacht suddenly sank. The boat was anchored off the coast of Sicily, where it had been anchored for a night of entertainment, when an unexpected “severe storm” arose in the nearby waters. Within 16 minutes, the ship went down. Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter, his lawyer, and several others, all drowned as a result.
The tragic incident immediately fueled suspicions due to the strange timing of the boat’s sinking. Lynch and his entourage were on the boat to celebrate Lynch’s latest legal victory: the tech executive had just been acquitted in a decade-long fraud case involving a multibillion-dollar deal to sell his software company to Hewlett-Packard. in 2011. After years of fighting fraud charges related to the deal, a US court—just two months before the tragic boating incident—acquitted the technology executive of all charges related to the case.
Now, in a twist that’s sure to throw off conspiracy theorists, CNN is reporting that the boat, dubbed the Bayesian, may have watertight filters holding “highly encrypted hard drives.” Apparently Lynch didn’t trust cloud services and, as a result, carried an encrypted drive whenever he sailed. Those drives, in turn, may “contain highly sensitive data linked to a number of Western intelligence services,” the outlet reports, citing four sources familiar with the local police investigation.
To strengthen this argument, CNN emphasizes Lynch’s high-level government connections, noting that “he was in contact with the British, American and other intelligence services through his various companies” (Lynch was involved in the cybersecurity industry, often cooperating with government agencies), and at the time in the past, he has served as an advisor to many British prime ministers, including David Cameron and Theresa May.
Authorities are now trying to capture and secure the sunken hard drives. CNN reports that police are stepping up security and underwater surveillance around the sunken ship, apparently fearing that it could be targeted by foreign governments (Russia and China are both mentioned).
An extremely weird twist on a story that already has a lot of weird buildings. Case in point: Stephen Chamberlain, Lynch’s business partner (and defendant in the just-concluded trial), died the same day Lynch’s boat sank. Chamberlain was hit by a car while jogging on August 17th and died from his injuries two days later. Although this may sound straightforward Michael Claytonit may also be a coincidence. The driver of the vehicle that struck Chamberlin is described as a 49-year-old woman who “remained at the scene” after police arrived.
Lynch’s software company, Autonomy, was acquired by Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011. At the time the deal went through, Lynch was serving as Autonomy’s CEO. Soon after the deal went through, however, Lynch left the company, and the company’s operations quickly unraveled. He was then accused of raising the value of Autonomy in the period before it was sold to Hewlett-Packard. Lynch denied the allegations and maintained that HP consolidated the company’s operations after the acquisition. After years of court battles, the US court finally agreed to Lynch’s case.
Lynch’s lawyer, Chris Morvillo, who helped him win the lawsuit against HP—also died along with his wife, when Bayesian went down. The couple had been celebrating a legal victory along with Lynch.
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