Body of British tech entrepreneur Lynch retrieved from yacht, daughter missing

By Giselda Vagnoni and Guglielmo Mangiapane

PORTICELLO, Italy (Reuters) -The body of British tech magnate Mike Lynch was retrieved on Thursday from the wreck of his family yacht that sank this week off the coast of Sicily during a violent storm, a senior Italian official said.

Lynch's 18-year-old daughter Hannah is still unaccounted for, interior ministry official Massimo Mariani told Reuters after being briefed by the emergency services.

The British-flagged Bayesian, a 56-metre-long (184-foot) superyacht carrying 22 passengers and crew, was anchored off the port of Porticello, near Palermo, when it disappeared beneath the waves in minutes after bad weather struck early Monday.

Lynch, 59, was one of the UK's best-known tech entrepreneurs and had invited friends to join him on the yacht to celebrate his acquittal in June in a U.S. fraud trial.

Seven people are believed to have died in the disaster while 15 survived, including Lynch's wife, Angela Bacares, who is the owner of the Bayesian.

Italian officials confirmed they had retrieved on Wednesday the bodies of Jonathan Bloomer, a non-executive chair of Morgan Stanley International, and Christopher Morvillo of the law firm Clifford Chance, alongside their wives, Judy Bloomer and Neda Morvillo.

The body of the onboard chef, Canadian-Antiguan national Recaldo Thomas, was recovered near the wreck on Monday.

Mariani said it was possible that Hannah Lynch's body was not in the boat, but might have been swept out to sea.

Fire brigade spokesperson Luca Cari said if her body was still in the yacht it could take time to find, given the difficulty divers were having in accessing all areas of the boat, which is lying on its side at a depth of 50 metres (165 feet).

A judicial investigation has been opened into the disaster, which has baffled naval marine experts, who say a boat like the Bayesian, built by Italian high-end yacht manufacturer Perini, should have withstood the storm.

Giovanni Costantino, CEO of the Italian Sea Group, which owns Perini, told Italian media the Bayesian was "one of the safest boats in the world" and blamed the crew for failing to follow correct safety procedures.

The captain, James Cutfield, and his eight surviving crew members, have made no public comment on the disaster. The prosecutor leading the investigation, Ambrogio Cartosio, has scheduled a press conference for Saturday.

CHALLENGING CONDITIONS

Specialist rescuers have been searching inside the hull of the sunken yacht for the past three days in what they said were extremely challenging conditions due to the depth and the narrowness of the places that the divers are scouring.

The fire brigade compared the efforts to those that were carried out, on a larger scale, for the Costa Concordia, a luxury cruise liner that capsized off the Italian island of Giglio in January 2012, killing 32 people.

Once the final body is recovered, experts will have to decide whether, or how, to salvage the vessel.

The CEO of Italian Sea Group said the yacht's automatic tracking system suggested that it took 16 minutes from the moment the storm first hit to the sinking.

He said it was clear the ship took in large amounts of water, adding that investigators would need to see what doorways or hatches might have been left open, focusing notably on a main door located on the left side of the yacht.

"A Perini boat survived the Category 5 Katrina hurricane. Do you think one couldn't survive a waterspout here," he told Corriere della Sera newspaper, referring to a type of tornado which is believed to have hit the Bayesian.

Under maritime law, a captain has full responsibility for the ship and the crew, as well as the safety of all those aboard.

The captain of the Costa Concordia, Francesco Schettino, is serving a 16-year prison term for his role in the 2012 disaster after he admitted to sailing too close to underwater rocks.

(Writing by Crispian BalmerReporting by Giselda VagnoniAdditional reporting by Giulia Segreti in Rome and William James in LondonEditing by Bernadette Baum, Sharon Singleton Frances Kerry and Rod Nickel)