The British entrepreneur, who was found not guilty of fraud charges in the sale of his company to Hewlett-Packard, was celebrating his acquittal when his yacht that sank off the coast of Sicily in a storm.
Mike Lynch, a British software mogul who was once celebrated as a top technology leader — only to spend more than a decade defending himself against accusations that he orchestrated one of the biggest frauds in Silicon Valley history — died on Monday after his yacht sank off the coast of Sicily. He was 59.
An official in the Italian city of Palermo confirmed on Thursday that Mr. Lynch’s body had been recovered by divers.
Twelve guests and 10 crew members were onboard the yacht, the Bayesian, when it went down during a violent storm. Mr. Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, was rescued, along with nine crew members and six passengers. Six bodies have been recovered and one person is still missing, Mr. Lynch’s daughter Hannah Lynch.
Mr. Lynch’s death came two months after he was acquitted in federal court in San Francisco of criminal fraud charges, tied to the $11 billion sale of his company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. The takeover, widely regarded among investors as one of the worst deals in history, led HP to accuse Mr. Lynch of deception.
U.S. prosecutors charged Mr. Lynch with more than a dozen counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the deal, with a potential sentence running to about two decades in prison.
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Source: Elections - nytimes.com
