Prosecutors in Sicily are in the early stages of their investigation into the sinking of the Bayesian superyacht and are yet to rule any possibilities out
Italian prosecutors have said they can’t rule out the possibility of manslaughter after a luxury yacht sank off the coast of Sicily, killing seven people.
In a press conference on Saturday morning, prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio confirmed that a manslaughter investigation had been opened over the sinking of the Bayesian superyacht during a storm near Porticello at about 5am local time on Monday.
British tech mogul Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among six people recovered from the wreckage this week.
Morgan Stanley International bank chairman Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy Bloomer, Clifford Chance lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda Morvillo were also recovered from the sunken vessel.
Those six victims were found after the body of Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, who was working as a chef on the yacht, was recovered at the scene on Monday.
In a press briefing, Mr Cartosio said: “The Termini Imerese prosecution has opened a case hypothesising the crime of shipwreck and of manslaughter but we are only at the initial stage of the inquiry so far.
“I have to emphasise that the development of the inquiry could actually be of any sort imaginable.”
Reporters heard that the two offences being considered are manslaughter and culpable shipwreck.
Mr Cartosio said prosecutors are conducting an investigation against unknown persons. Asked if the crew will remain in Sicily, he said: “There’s no obligation but they should be available for the investigation.”
Describing the incident as a “very grave tragedy”, he praised the “incredible courage and skill” of firefighters, firefighting divers who “carried out a very difficult mission”.
The 56-metre Bayesian, which had a crew of 10 people and 12 passengers on board when the storm struck, had sunk to a depth of 50 metres, with divers struggling to navigate the ship’s narrow corridors with objects lying in their way.
Girolamo Bentivoglio, the chief of the Palermo fire service said specialised divers attempting to retrieve the bodies had to deal with “very little visibility due to the weather conditions” and were called in from across the country as part of a search-and-rescue operation which involved “some 70 people” each day.
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He added: “The yacht obviously pinned to the right and obviously the (people) tried to go on the other side and then took refuge in their cabins.
“We found four or five bodies in the cabin on the left and there was another one in the third cabin on the left too, and obviously they were in the higher part of the wreck.”
Maritime director of western Sicily, Rear Admiral Raffaele Macauda said the weather at the time of the yacht’s sinking was “abnormal” and there was nothing to suggest such an “extreme situation” would arise.
He told reporters: “This was an abnormal meteorological condition. And as you can see from the internet there was forecasts from midnight to 4am, winds of a strength of five from the north-west and the west and a storm alert. But there wasn’t an alert of a tornado.”
He added: “Given that the conditions were such, there wasn’t anything to suggest there could be an extreme situation arising.
“There are vessels that can monitor, after all, these events and one would have thought that the captain had taken precautions.”
Asked how it was possible for most of the crew members to survive, Raffaele Cammarano, the prosecutor of the case, said: “We have tried to find out maximum information possible from the crew members or the survivors – all I would say is that the incident happened really, really suddenly.
“The inquiry will begin with the facts of the shipwreck – that is all I can say at the moment.”
Mr Cammarano suggested that passengers may not have been able to escape from the yacht because they were asleep. Asked why they were not woken up or alerted, he said that is something investigators are trying to work out.
He said several of the bodies onboard the sunken yacht were found in a single cabin which was not theirs.
Asked whether there was a black box on the ship and if the hatches were left open, he said: “We haven’t got exact information about the black box. It was extremely difficult to get inside some of the cabins and the yacht itself.”
Mr Cammarano, was asked about the vessel’s crew undergoing alcohol and drug testing, and said officials were trying to conduct those tests.
A leading coastguard official said he could not confirm how long it would take to retrieve the shipwreck of the sunken yacht, adding that recovering the fuel tanks was a “priority for us because it has environmental knock-on effects”.
Asked about the timeline of recovering the wreck, maritime director of western Sicily Rear Admiral Raffaele Macauda said: “Well, you know, we’re talking about a shipwreck at 50 metres down.
“Everything depends on the availability of the owners and the timeframe of the retrieval of the wreck and of course all that has to be submitted to the port authorities and in parallel of course there will be the inquiry results and it’s only really then that we will be able to authorise the operation.
“I can’t say, like some experts who have already spoken on the subject, that it will be eight weeks.
“But the preliminary phase which we requested was to retrieve the wreck and after that we can proceed with the rest.
“There are specialised companies after all who can proceed with getting up the fuel tanks, for example, first, so that’s a priority for us because it has environmental knock-on effects and then we’ll work out a proper timeframe – a plan with a timeframe.”
The press conference heard that no post-mortem examinations have been carried out yet.
Of the 22 passengers and crew on board, 15, including Mr Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, were rescued after escaping on to a lifeboat.
The boat trip was a celebration of Mr Lynch’s acquittal in a fraud case in the US.
The businessman, who founded software giant Autonomy in 1996, was cleared in June of carrying out a massive fraud relating to its 11 billion dollar (£8.64 billion) sale to US company Hewlett Packard.
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