Five of the six missing persons' bodies were found on the 21st (local time), three days after the luxury yacht Bayesian sank off the coast of Sicily, Italy.
Salvatore Cocina, head of the Sicily Civil Protection Department, told the British PA news agency on the same day, "The fifth body has been found, and so far four bodies have been recovered," adding, "One person is still missing."
With the confirmation of five bodies on this day, the death toll from the sinking accident rose to six. Earlier, the body of the onboard chef was recovered on the day of the sinking, the 19th.
According to Italy's ANSA news agency, the four bodies recovered on this day were identified as Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International and a British financier, his wife Judy, Chris Morvillo, an American lawyer from the international law firm Clifford Chance, and his wife Neda.
The status of the remaining two missing persons, including Mike Lynch, founder of the famous IT company Autonomy, known as the "Bill Gates of the UK," and his teenage daughter Hannah, is unknown. Deep-sea divers are scheduled to recover the fifth body on the morning of the 22nd and continue the search for the last missing person.
Earlier, in the early morning of the 19th, the 56-meter-long British luxury yacht Bayesian sank after being caught in a violent storm while anchored about 700 meters from Porticello Harbor in Palermo, Sicily. The yacht sank to a depth of 49 meters in just 3 to 5 minutes.
Of the 22 people on board (12 passengers and 10 crew members), 15 were rescued, including Lynch's wife and a one-year-old baby, but one onboard chef died, and six, including Lynch and his teenage daughter, went missing.
The passengers had gathered to celebrate Lynch's acquittal in June from fraud charges alleging that he inflated the company's value when he sold Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in the United States for $11 billion (about 14.7 trillion won) in 2011, but tragedy struck. The deceased Bloomer had appeared in court as a witness for Lynch's defense, and Morvillo was a lawyer from the law firm representing Lynch.
Italian authorities are investigating all survivors, including James Cutfield, a New Zealand captain, to determine the cause of the accident. The UK's Marine Accident Investigation Branch has also dispatched four investigators to the site.
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