Captain of sunken Lynch family yacht put under investigation
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
British tech magnate Mike Lynch and six other people were killed when the luxury yacht sank in stormy weather off Sicily last week.
PHOTO: REUTERS
DeeperDive is a beta AI feature. Refer to full articles for the facts.
ROME – Italian prosecutors have placed under investigation the captain of the superyacht that sank off Sicily last week in a storm, killing British tech magnate Mike Lynch and six other people, a judicial source said on Aug 26.
Mr James Cutfield, a 51-year-old New Zealand national, is being investigated for manslaughter and shipwreck, the source said, confirming earlier reports by Italian dailies la Repubblica and Corriere della Sera.
Being placed under investigation in Italy does not imply guilt and does not mean formal charges will necessarily follow. Notices to people under investigation need to be sent out before the authorities can carry out autopsies on the bodies of the dead.
Magistrates spoke to Mr Cutfield on Aug 25 for the second time in a week, la Repubblica reported, questioning him for more than two hours. Reuters has been unable to contact Mr Cutfield.
It is still unclear whether other members of the crew or other people will be under investigation along with the captain.
The daily said prosecutors may also investigate a crew member who was on duty when the storm hit and survived the incident.
The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56m-long superyacht, was carrying 22 people when it capsized and sank on Aug 19 within minutes of being hit by a pre-dawn storm while anchored off northern Sicily.
Fifteen people survived, including Mr Lynch’s wife, whose company owned the Bayesian.
Mr Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, was among those who died.
While the yacht had been hit by a very sudden meteorological event, it was plausible that crimes of multiple manslaughter and causing a shipwreck through negligence had been committed, the head of the public prosecutor’s office of Termini Imerese, Mr Ambrogio Cartosio, said on Aug 24.
Maritime law gives a captain full responsibility for the ship and the crew, as well as the safety of all aboard.
Mr Cutfield and his eight surviving crew have made no public comment yet on the disaster.
“The Bayesian was built to go to sea in any weather,” Mr Franco Romani, a nautical architect who was part of the team that designed it, told daily La Stampa in an interview published on Aug 26.
He said it was likely the yacht had taken on water from a side hatch that was left open.
Mr Romani said the crew underestimated the bad weather and that they should have made sure that all openings had been shut, and the anchor removed before the storm hit the boat.
REUTERS
