An underwater “battle” has been going on in recent days around the yacht Bayesian, which sank in a storm on August 19 off Palermo, Sicily, leading to the death of the British tycoon. Mike Lynch and six other people.
The secret services of several countries sent divers to the wreckage of the sailboat at a depth of 50 meters, in search of two “personal” hard drives belonging to Mike Lynch, as La Repubblica writes.
According to the Italian newspaper, intelligence services, especially from China and Russia, are trying to find two super-encrypted devices from Leeds, which the English tycoon never parted with, and which remain in the yacht’s two safes.
“Italian navy divers investigating the wreck raised the alarm and called for heightened protection measures, fearing that sensitive data stored in the yacht’s safes could be of interest to foreign governments such as Russia and China,” the Italian newspaper writes.
The two hard drives appear to contain highly classified information linked to certain Western intelligence agencies. According to Western intelligence sources, the two hard drives also contained “passwords to very sensitive data, which Lynch considered the yacht to be the most secure place to store it.”
Cooperation with Mossad against Hamas
Co-founder of the cybersecurity company “Dark Trace”, the British tycoon is said to have worked with some secret services in the past, such as the Israeli one Mossad.
According to the Italian news agency “Agenzia Nova”, the Israeli secret services used the systems of Mike Lynch’s British company to locate some of its top leaders. Hamas.
In March 2023, Darktrace announced the creation of Darktrace Federal, a new service that would serve the U.S. Department of Defense, the intelligence community, federal civilian agencies, and national critical infrastructure to enhance their capabilities to protect against cyberattacks.
Darktrace Federal employs security experts and former members of the US Secret Service who led the fight against CIA cyber operations and supported the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Pentagon. A little later, in fact, Darktrace was acquired by the American investment fund Thoma Bravo for $5.32 billion. The American fund already has several companies active in cybersecurity, such as Sophos, Proofpoint, Ping Identity and SailPoint.
Relations between Leeds and the United States have not always been smooth. In fact, last June, the British businessman was acquitted by a San Francisco court of charges of fraud and false accounting, after being sued by Hewlett Packard. It was a legal dispute that lasted 13 years.
Suspicious circumstances
Italian authorities are still suspicious about the circumstances in which Mike Lynch’s yacht sank. Especially since around the same time as the British tycoon’s drowning, his close associate Stephen Chamberlain, who had been Darktrace’s chief operating officer, was killed by a passing car while jogging. Chamberlain was a co-defendant in Leeds’ fraud trial but was also acquitted.
The Italian company “Italian Sea Group (TISG), which built the Leeds yacht, is now involved in the tragic case. TISG announced that it intends to sue the tycoon’s widows, because the sinking “caused serious damage to the company’s image”. It is even asking for compensation of more than 222 million euros, considering that the widow and the crew members defamed the company, which caused it to lose many customers.
‘Uncharacteristic and senseless mistakes’ sank Mike Lynch’s ship: possible manslaughter charges