A manslaughter investigation has been opened by an Italian prosecutor into the deaths of seven people in the sinking of the superyacht Bayesian off the Sicily coast last Monday.
A Reuters report in The Irish Times quotes the head of the public prosecutor’s office in the Palermo district of Termini Imerese, Ambrogio Cartosio, who confirmed the decision at a press conference.
He said that while the yacht had been hit by a very sudden meteorological event, it was “plausible” that there had been crimes of multiple manslaughter and causing a shipwreck through negligence.
15 people survived, and crew members have already been questioned.
It is expected that the 56 metre yacht will be raised from the seabed where it lies at a 90 degree angle in 50 metres of water as part of the investigation.
Seven people died in the sinking - British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, whose parents were from Cork and Tipperary, and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah; his lawyer Chris Morvillo who represented him during a recent trial and his wife Neda Morvillo; Morgan Stanley International Bank chair Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy Bloomer; and the yacht’s chef Recaldo Thomas.
The British Marine Accident Investigation Branch has already sent its own team as the yacht was registered in Britain.
Giovanni Costantino, chief executive of The Italian Sea Group, which owns Perini, the company which builds yachts like the Bayesian, claimed the sinking was the result of human error.
In an interview with Sky News, he said the yacht was probably hit by an intense downburst which is relatively frequent.
"There are a whole series of operations that highlight a chain of negative events that were negatively managed on board," he said.
"The first is why the ship and the crew were not in a state of alert, given the storm from the weather charts that everyone could read and in particular had to be read by the ship's bridge guard, the event was absolutely readable and expected."
He said the yacht's crew should have been in a state of "alert management", meaning everyone on board had to be in the main lounge, which is the assembly point, rather than their cabins.
No one should have been on deck, while the captain, James Cutfield, should have been inside with the engines to manage the ship, he said.
"The ship, both the hull and the quarterdeck, all the openings, were supposed to be closed," he added.
Read Reuters in The Irish Times and Sky News
