Boatbuilder behind Mike Lynch’s doomed yacht Bayesian ‘seeking £186m for damaged reputation from widow & surviving crew’

THE boatbuilder behind Mike Lynch’s ill-fated superyacht is seeking £186m from his widow and surviving crew after the tragic sinking.

Manufacturer Italian Sea Group (TISG) is alleging it has faced reputational damage after the superyacht sank off Sicily last month.

But a close friend of the Lynch family has fired back saying the company should be “ashamed” and its CEO is a “disgrace”.

Billionaire businessman Lynch and his daughter Hannah died on board the doomed 56m yacht along with five others on August 19.

Lawyers for the manufacturer have now launched a civil claim to try and claw back losses they allege were caused by the sinking, La Nazione reported.

A close friend of the Lynch family fired back at the claim, lambasting TISG’s CEO.

They said: “The Italian Sea Group should be ashamed.

“Giovanni Costantino is a disgrace, desperately trying to shift blame.

“He rushed to the media before all the bodies had even been recovered, showing his lack of decency.

“Now, it seems, he wants to sue his own clients.”

The claim directly calls into question the actions of Captain James Cutfield and other crew saying it was human error, not design issues, which led to the sinking.

It also reportedly names the yacht management company and its owner, which in turn is owned by Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares.

They say Cutfield underestimated weather conditions and did not anchor the boat in a safe place or prepare it to battle rough waves.

An expert report, they claim, will demonstrate the keel was not lowered and that the rear and side doors were left open.

The watertight doors that separate the dinghy garage from the engine room were also not closed.

TISG said it has lost business do to the sinking as it was in negotiations to sell three yachts which had already been completed.

It also claimed a “well-known European fashion house” suddenly became disinterested in building a line of boats and an investment fund had backed out of negotiations.

Media reports show TISG is partially owned by and has been collaborating on yachts with Giorgio Armani.

The Bayesian sinking also saw the prospective buyers walk away causing a loss of earnings, they allege.

Within hours of the sinking, before all of the bodies were
recovered, TISG’s chief executive, Giovanni Costantino, publicly blamed the crew saying the boat was “unsinkable”.

He told a local newspaper: “Everything that was done reveals a very long summation of errors.

“The people should not have been in the cabins, the boat should not have been at anchor.”

Bizarrely, TISG told media its lawyer had not been “authorised” to pursue the claim in court and they had been instructed to remove it.

The company said: “The Italian Sea Group … strongly denies the claims published in La Nazione regarding a legal action following the Bayesian tragedy.

“Although TISG has given a generic mandate to the lawyers named in the article, no legal representative of the company has examined, signed or authorised any writ of summons.”

The captain of the doomed Bayesian, James Cutfield, 51, is being investigated for manslaughter.

Prosecutors are also probing ship engineer Tim Parker-Eaton, from Clophill, Beds, and sailor Matthew Griffith, 22 under the same charges.

The yacht was sunk by a freak “Black Swan” waterspout which would have appeared without warning, maritime experts believe.

The yacht’s 264ft tall mast was hammered by a water tornado as storms battered the Porticello Harbour causing it to sink within minutes.

Divers have recovered surveillance equipment and the ship’s on board hard drives from the yacht

They hope data from them will be able to shed light on why the Bayesian sank, but there are worries they will to too waterlogged to retrieve it.

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”.