A total of 22 people were on board the British-flagged sailing yacht Bayesian, 56 meters in length, when it was struck by a fierce storm just outside the Porticello harbor and sank. Of the passengers, 15 have been rescued, and one crew member was found dead.
Among the six missing is British tech mogul Michael Lynch, who was recently acquitted in a U.S. court of 15 fraud charges related to the $11 billion sale of his software company, Autonomy, to Hewlett-Packard in 2011. The other five missing include Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Morgan Stanley International President Jonathan Bloomer, his wife Judy, and lawyer Chris Morvillo, who had represented Lynch in his U.S. trial, along with Morvillo’s wife, Neda.
Morvillo and his wife had been invited on the sailing trip along with other members of the mogul’s legal team, as a gesture of thanks from Lynch for their help in resolving his legal troubles. After the successful trial in San Francisco last June, the lawyer posted a message on LinkedIn referring to Lynch’s case.
It was his second-to-last post on the platform, just shortly before the shipwreck that sealed his fate.
“I want to give a huge thank you to my patient and incredible wife, Neda Morvillo, and our two strong, smart, and beautiful daughters, Sabrina and Sophia. I wouldn’t have accomplished anything without your love and support. I’m so glad to be home. And they lived happily ever after…” concluded Morvillo’s tragic post.
Morvillo has worked on high-profile corruption cases, including Lynch’s recent acquittal. As an Assistant U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York from 1999 to 2005, he worked on the criminal investigation surrounding the 2001 World Trade Center attacks. Since 2011, he has been a partner at the Clifford Chance law firm in New York.
