Lynch missing at sea having escaped possible death in a US jail
One man died and Dr Lynch, aged 59, was one of six people missing on the sunken yacht which is registered to a company owned by his wife, Angela Bacares. She was one of 15 people rescued according to AFP news agency.
The BBC reports that there were 22 people on board and that a one-year-old child was among those rescued.
It adds that the skipper of a nearby ship found 15 survivors in a life raft and alerted the coastguard. The 183ft yacht Bayesian was reported to be around 700 metres from harbour when it sank.
Dr Lynch, a former adviser to then Prime Minister David Cameron, sold his Cambridge software company Autonomy to US giant Hewlett Packard for $11.78 billion in October 2011.
The deal turned sour for HP who blamed Dr Lynch and colleagues of perpetrating fraud – charges he always vigorously denied.
An American jury agreed with him when they cleared him of all charges on June 5 after he had spent months under house arrest in San Francisco.
Dr Lynch had told me recently that he thought he might die in prison had he been found guilty. Once freed he intended to initiate a campaign to ensure no UK executive would ever again be extradited and forced to go through a similar ordeal. He also intended to fight a UK court ruling awarding damages to HP that had been held in abeyance during his time in America.
