As soon as dubbed the British “Bill Gates”, tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch is amongst these lacking since Monday after a superyacht sank off the coast of Sicily in a sudden storm.
The 59-year-old businessman — who was solely acquitted weeks in the past within the US after going through large fraud fees — was reportedly with colleagues on board the posh vessel moored off the coast of Porticello, east of Palermo.
His spouse, Angela Bacares, was among the many 15 folks rescued, however his daughter Hannah is among the many six lacking, Salvo Cocina, head of the Civil Safety Company in Sicily, informed AFP.
Initially from Suffolk in east England, Lynch was a former advisor to 2 British prime ministers and as soon as a star entrepreneur who appeared to signify a uncommon tech British success story.
The businessman has a fortune of £500 million ($648 million) in line with the newest Sunday Instances “Rich List”, and owes his fame to his software program agency Autonomy which he bought to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.
He based the corporate in 1996 in Cambridge, the place he earned his doctorate, and turned it into a number one British tech agency.
However only one 12 months after the mega-deal, HP reported a write-down of $8.8 billion — together with greater than $5 billion it attributed to inflated knowledge from Autonomy — plunging Lynch right into a decade-long fraud scandal.
Prosecutors accused him of participating in a large scheme as Autonomy’s chief government to deceive HP by pumping up his firm’s worth earlier than its sale.
Final 12 months, Lynch was extradited from Britain to the US to face trial, going through 20 years in jail if convicted of the 17 fees and spending the 12 months in home arrest.
However in June he was acquitted on all fees.
“I am looking forward to returning to the UK and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field,” Lynch mentioned after the decision was handed down in a San Francisco court docket.
Scapegoat?
Lynch — who made round $815 million from the Autonomy sale — at all times denied the fraud fees, accusing HP of creating him a scapegoat for its personal failings.
After returning to the UK, Lynch informed the Instances newspaper in July that he had “various medical things that would have made it difficult to survive” in an American jail.
Talking in regards to the verdict, Lynch had informed the Instances: “It’s bizarre, but now you have a second life. The question is, what do you want to do with it?”
Father of two daughters aged 18 and 21, and a canine lover — proudly owning two dachshunds and 4 sheepdogs — Lynch has a house within the prosperous London district of Chelsea, in line with the newspaper, in addition to proudly owning a farm in Suffolk.
Regardless of the acquittal, the fraud case is just not closed.
In 2022, London’s Excessive Court docket dominated in a civil fraud case that HP had been duped and had overpaid for Autonomy.
The court docket has but to rule on the billions of {dollars} in damages claimed by the American group.
Additionally sued by HP, Autonomy’s former CFO Sushovan Hussain was discovered responsible of fraud in 2018 by a US jury, with Hussain jailed for 5 years.
The shadow of Lynch’s authorized troubles has lengthy weighed on the share costs of one other British firm — the cybersecurity and synthetic intelligence group Darktrace of which he’s a founding investor.
However in a reversal of fortune, Darktrace accepted a $5.3 billion takeover supply from US personal fairness agency Thoma Bravo in April, sending its share value hovering.
A spokeswoman for Lynch declined to remark when contacted by AFP on Monday.
