THE Bayesian superyacht sank with Mike Lynch’s two hyper-encrypted hard drives that may contain MI5 secrets, reports Italian media.
The billionaire businessman tragically died with his daughter on board the doomed yacht off the coast of Sicily last month when the vessel was hit by a tornado.
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Reports claim the tech entrepreneur had a pair of hard drives that may hold secret information on the world’s most powerful spy agencies on board.
Divers are now scouring the sea floor for the crucial disks at the bottom of the sea before they fall into the wrong hands, reports The Republic – Italy’s second-biggest newspaper.
Sources told the paper the disks held: “the great digital archive of the IT entrepreneur whose clients included the British MI5, the American NSA and the Israeli services”.
The Italian newspaper said the “super drives” are protected by “cutting-edge encryption”.
But the drives now could be a target for the hostile spy agencies of Russia, China, and Iran as they seek to steal valuable secrets.
Lynch reportedly did not trust the cloud to save his high-level business secrets so always had the hard drives on him.
The billionaire partly made his wealth by creating algorithms and software widely used by top Western security agencies.
His company Autonomy won high-profile contracts with governments, including a deal to provide infrastructure to the US Homeland Security for the post-9/11 war on terror.
The Bayesian is also reported to hold other documents in the ship’s safe that could also be highly valuable.
James Bond fan Lynch also co-founded the cybersecurity company Darktrace and employed high-ranking intelligence agents for the firm.
Investigators from Palermo have pulled no personal effects of the seven victims and 15 survivors from the ocean yet.
But last week, divers recovered surveillance equipment from the yacht that will hopefully be able to shed light on its final moments afloat.
Divers have also recovered the ship’s onboard hard drives as they continue their investigation.
However, the ship had no black box and there are worries the Bayesian’s hard drives may not be water resistant.
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The captain of the doomed Bayesian, James Cutfield, 51, is being investigated for manslaughter.
Kiwi Cutfield, along with two other members of his crew, are being investigated by Italian authorities for culpable shipwreck and multiple manslaughter.
Prosecutors are also probing ship engineer Tim Parker-Eaton, from Clophill, Beds, and sailor Matthew Griffith, 22 under the same charges.
The 184 ft Bayesian was carrying 22 people when it sank within minutes of being hit by a downburst – a strong, localised wind – while anchored in Porticello near Palermo.
The luxury vessel was caught up in a tornado which caused it to sink in the early hours of the morning.
Fifteen of those on board were rescued on a life raft, while the yacht’s cook Recaldo Thomas was discovered dead in the water shortly afterwards.
Specialist divers recovered the bodies of billionaire Lynch, 59, and four of his guests, from the first cabin on the left.
Officials said the victims had scrambled to reach air pockets in the yacht, which sank 164ft stern-first before rolling onto its right side on the seabed.
Investigators are understood to be rifling through CCTV footage and photographs taken by locals on the night of the storm to understand why the boat sank so quickly.
Chief Prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio said the victims would have been asleep when a tornado-like waterspout struck the boat, leaving them unable to escape.
Lynch had just won a court case over the sale of Autonomy to tech giant HP after being accused of fraudulently raising the price.
The 59-year-old had been living under house arrest in San Francisco, US, with just his beloved dog Faucet for company, for well over a year.
He was finally acquitted just months ago and spoke about longing to spend time with his wife, Angela Bacares and their two daughters.
In 1996, he started software company Autonomy, which would be used to analyse huge swathes of data from unstructured sources like phone calls, emails and videos.
Describing his small team he said: “Eccentric people working really hard on a project. No bureaucracy. No admin. Lots of late nights, lots of eating cold pizza”.
Autonomy became an instant success and benefitted from the dotcom boom, which led it to join the FTSE 100 of top UK listed companies.
The achievements with Mike, the chief executive officer, at the helm led to considerable praise including receiving an OBE for services to enterprise in 2006.
Inside The Bayesian’s final 16 minutes
By Ellie Doughty, Foreign News Reporter
Data recovered from the Bayesian’s Automatic Identification System (AIS) breaks down exactly how it sank in a painful minute-by-minute timeline.
At 3.50am on Monday August 19 the Bayesian began to shake “dangerously” during a fierce storm, Italian outlet Courier revealed.
Just minutes later at 3.59am the boat’s anchor gave way, with a source saying the data showed there was “no anchor left to hold”.
After the ferocious weather ripped away the boat’s mooring it was dragged some 358 metres through the water.
By 4am it had began to take on water and was plunged into a blackout, indicating that the waves had reached its generator or even engine room.
At 4.05am the Bayesian fully disappeared underneath the waves.
An emergency GPS signal was finally emitted at 4.06am to the coastguard station in Bari, a city nearby, alerting them that the vessel had sunk.
Early reports suggested the disaster struck around 5am local time off the coast of Porticello Harbour in Palermo, Sicily.
The new data pulled from the boat’s AIS appears to suggest it happened an hour earlier at around 4am.
Some 15 of the 22 onboard were rescued, 11 of them scrambling onto an inflatable life raft that sprung up on the deck.
A smaller nearby boat – named Sir Robert Baden Powell – then helped take those people to shore.
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