Mike Lynch: the 'British Bill Gates' missing after yacht sinks off Sicily

Mike Lynch, CEO of Autonomy Group, attends The Times CEO summit at the Savoy Hotel in London, on June 21, 2011. Photo by AFP

The 59-year-old businessman -- who was only acquitted weeks ago in the U.S. after facing massive fraud charges -- was reportedly with colleagues on board the luxury vessel moored off the coast of Porticello, east of Palermo.

His wife, Angela Bacares, was among the 15 people rescued, but his daughter Hannah is among the six missing, Salvo Cocina, head of the Civil Protection Agency in Sicily, told AFP.

Originally from Suffolk in east England, Lynch was a former advisor to two British prime ministers and once a star entrepreneur who seemed to represent a rare tech British success story.

The businessman has a fortune of £500 million ($648 million) according to the latest Sunday Times "Rich List", and owes his fame to his software firm Autonomy which he sold to Hewlett-Packard for $11 billion in 2011.

He founded the company in 1996 in Cambridge, where he earned his doctorate, and turned it into a leading British tech firm.

But just one year after the mega-deal, HP reported a write-down of $8.8 billion -- including more than $5 billion it attributed to inflated data from Autonomy -- plunging Lynch into a decade-long fraud scandal.

Prosecutors accused him of taking part in a massive scheme as Autonomy's chief executive to deceive HP by pumping up his company's value before its sale.

Last year, Lynch was extradited from Britain to the U.S. to stand trial, facing two decades in jail if convicted of the 17 charges and spending the year in house arrest.

But in June he was acquitted on all charges.

"I am looking forward to returning to the U.K. and getting back to what I love most: my family and innovating in my field," Lynch said after the verdict was handed down in a San Francisco court.

Scapegoat?

Lynch -- who made around $815 million from the Autonomy sale -- always denied the fraud charges, accusing HP of making him a scapegoat for its own failings.

After returning to the U.K., Lynch told the Times newspaper in July that he had "various medical things that would have made it difficult to survive" in an American prison.

Speaking about the verdict, Lynch had told the Times: "It's bizarre, but now you have a second life. The question is, what do you want to do with it?"

Father of two daughters aged 18 and 21, and a dog lover -- owning two dachshunds and four sheepdogs -- Lynch has a home in the affluent London district of Chelsea, according to the newspaper, as well as owning a farm in Suffolk.

Despite the acquittal, the fraud case is not closed.

In 2022, London's High Court ruled in a civil fraud case that HP had been duped and had overpaid for Autonomy.

The court has yet to rule on the billions of dollars in damages claimed by the American group.

Also sued by HP, Autonomy's former CFO Sushovan Hussain was found guilty of fraud in 2018 by a U.S. jury, with Hussain jailed for five years.

The shadow of Lynch's legal troubles has long weighed on the share prices of another British company -- the cybersecurity and artificial intelligence group Darktrace of which he is a founding investor.

But in a reversal of fortune, Darktrace accepted a $5.3 billion takeover offer from US private equity firm Thoma Bravo in April, sending its share price soaring.

A spokeswoman for Lynch declined to comment when contacted by AFP on Monday.