The ' British Bill Gates' missing after his luxury superyacht sunk off the coast of Palermo was living a "second life" after being freed from a prolonged 13-year legal battle. 58-year-old Mike Lynch , who was acquitted in June following a US fraud trial, was among the six people who remain unaccounted for after their chartered sailboat sank when a tornado over the water known as a waterspout struck the area overnight. One body has been recovered, and police divers were trying to reach the hull of the ship, which was resting at a depth of 163 feet off Porticello, near Palermo, where it had been anchored, rescue authorities said.
Mr Lynch's disappearance comes just months after cleared of charges alleging he orchestrated a fraud and conspiracy leading up to an $11 billion deal (£8billion) that turned into a costly albatross for Silicon Valley pioneer Hewlett Packard. The not-guilty verdicts reached in June this year by a federal court jury in San Francisco followed an 11-week criminal trial that delved into the history of HP’s 2011 acquisition of Autonomy, a business software that Lynch founded and then oversaw as CEO in Britain. The jury acquitted Mr Lynch on all 15 felony counts facing him.
Toward the end of the trial, U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer threw out a count of securities fraud included in the U.
S. Justice Department case against him in an indictment dating back to 2018. It took years to extradite Mr Lynch from the U.
K. and then more legal wrangling before the.