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‘BRITAIN’S Bill Gates’ won a court fight after being flown to the US in chains – weeks before being caught in a yacht horror.
Entrepreneur Mike Lynch, 59, and daughter Hannah, 18, are two of the four Brits still missing hours after the £14m luxury vessel Bayesian capsized in a tornado.
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It comes as – in a bizarre twist of fate – Lynch’s former colleague and co-defendant Stephen Chamberlain has today died after being hit by a car on Saturday.
The doomed boat sank off the coast of the Italian island Sicily at about 5am local time.
A body found is understood to be that of vessel chef Ricardo Thomas, according to the BBC.
Lynch’s family, lawyers, and employees were on board when the boat when it sank, with witnesses describing the mast snapping in half.
They were celebrating the businessman’s recent triumph over fraud charges that left him facing 25 years in a US prison, The Telegraph reported.
The tech tycoon made his riches by selling his software company Autonomy to US computing giant Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011 for $11bn (£8.6bn).
But an intense legal battle following the high-profile acquisition loomed over Lynch for more than a decade, leading to him being flown to the US in chains last year.
US Marshsals took Lynch into custody at Heathrow, bundling him on board a United Airlines flight after all other passengers had already boarded.
He was extradited on fraud charges with a judge setting his bail at £79m before being acquitted by a jury in San Francisco earlier this year.
HOW LYNCH WON LEGAL BATTLE
Lynch had a few things in his favour when the case came to trial.
Firstly, was Sushovan Hussain, his second in command who unwittingly acted as a sacrificial lamb.
Lynch’s legal team were able to study his hearing and see in detail the Government’s case before devising a better defence plan.
Prosecutors accused the pair of using “every accounting trick in the book” to boost Autonomy’s earnings.
Lynch spent his time under house arrest avoiding watching anything about prisons, and staying laser focused on the case, he told The Times last month.
He also learned to play alto sax.
But the entrepreneur was also helped by the nature of the case leading to a boring and turgid trial.
It included painstaking parades of emails, reports and spreadsheets filled with jargon, leaving jurors glassy-eyed.
One was even dismissed because he repeatedly fell asleep.
During the proceedings, Lynch argued that any questionable activity was entirely immaterial in the context of a thriving business bringing in hundreds of millions a year.
While his lawyers claimed the books were approved by outside accountants and that, by British standards, the deals in question were appropriately accounted for.
Lynch was used as the final witness and rather than going “right for the jugular”, as his head lawyer Brian Heberlig said, the prosecutors simply “reviewed a chronology of documents, with no probing questions”.
The jury agreed.
In 2022, a UK High Court judge had, however, already concluded in a civil trial Lynch and Hussain had committed fraud.
Mr Justice Hildyard said: “In my judgment, Dr Lynch shared with Mr Hussain knowledge of the impropriety of the way aspects of Autonomy’s actual business activities had been accounted for and disclosed (or rather disguised, concealed or misleadingly presented).”
HPE is seeking $4bn (£3.1bn) in damages from Lynch personally. The judge has indicated any penalty would be much smaller.
Lynch and his wife Angela Bacares’ net worth was most recently estimated at $1.1bn (£852m) last year in the 2023 Sunday Times rich list.
Bacares is among those who have been rescued after the yacht disaster.
She told doctors her husband and daughter were still missing, La Repubblica reported.
Bacares said at 4am the boat tilted and they were woken up, at first thinking nothing was wrong.
But there was a scene of confusion as glass shattered and the Bayesian began to sink.
Bacares was seen in hospital today using a wheelchair and had bandages on her body.
A frantic hunt has now been launched for the missing six – which is made up of four Brits and two Americans, Italian paper Ansa reports.
Who is Mike Lynch?
By Georgie English
Entrepreneur Mike Lynch is still believed to be missing hours after a £14m luxury yacht capsized in a tornado off the coast of Sicily.
The tech tycoon, dubbed “Britain’s Bill Gates”, was one of the 22 people sailing onboard the £166,000 a week vessel, the Telegraph reported this afternoon.
Lynch, 59, sold Autonomy Corporation – a tech company for $11b to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
He has also been involved in Invoke Capital and cybersecurity company Darktrace.
He was awarded an OBE for his services to enterprise in 2006.
Born in Ilford, Lynch had a firefighter father from County Cork and a nurse mother from County Tipperary.
Away from work, Mike is married to wife Angela Bacares and the pair have two children together.
In 2023, the Sunday Times rich list set the couple’s value at £852m.
Just weeks ago, Lynch was acquitted of criminal charges by a jury in San Francisco after a 12-year legal battle over the $11bn sale of his firm, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
He was extradited to the US on fraud charges back in 2023 with a judge setting his bail at £79m.
US Marshsals took Lynch into custody at Heathrow, putting him in chains and bundling him on board a United Airlines flight.
However, he had a few things in his favour.
The nature of the case led to a boring and turgid trial, including painstaking parades of emails, reports and spreadsheets filled with jargon, leaving jurors glassy-eyed.
One was even dismissed because he repeatedly fell asleep.
Lynch argued that any questionable activity was entirely immaterial in the context of a thriving business bringing in hundreds of millions a year.
While his lawyers claimed the books were approved by outside accountants and that, by British standards, the deals in question were appropriately accounted for.
Lynch was used as the final witness and rather than going “right for the jugular”, as his head lawyer Brian Heberlig said, the prosecutors simply “reviewed a chronology of documents, with no probing questions”. The jury agreed.
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