ROME (Reuters) – Italian prosecutors have placed under investigation the captain of a luxury yacht that sank off Sicily last week in a storm, killing British technology mogul Mike Lynch and six other people, a judicial source said on Monday.
The source said that James Cutfield, a 51-year-old New Zealand citizen, is being investigated on charges of manslaughter and shipwreck, confirming earlier reports in Italian media.
Being placed under investigation in Italy does not mean that a person has been convicted or that formal charges have been brought against them. Notifications must be sent to those under investigation before the authorities can perform autopsies on dead bodies.
The decision came after Catfield was questioned for a second time. Reuters was unable to contact Catfield.
It is not yet clear whether other crew members or other people will be investigated along with the captain.
The British-flagged yacht, the 56-metre (186-foot) Baysian, was carrying 22 people when it capsized and sank on Monday minutes after being hit by a pre-dawn storm while anchored off northern Sicily.
Fifteen people survived, including Lynch’s wife, whose company owned the Bayesian newspaper. Lynch’s 18-year-old daughter, Hannah, was among the dead.
The head of the Termini Imerese prosecutor’s office, Ambrogio Cartosio, said on Saturday that although the yacht was hit by a sudden atmospheric phenomenon, it was plausible that the crimes of manslaughter and causing the shipwreck by negligence had been committed.
Maritime law gives the captain full responsibility for the ship, the crew and everyone on board.
There has been no public comment from Catfield and his eight surviving crew members on the disaster.
“The Bayesian ship was built to sail in any weather,” Franco Romani, a naval architect who was part of the team that designed the ship, said in an interview with La Stampa newspaper published Monday.
He said the yacht may have been ingested through a side hatch that was left open.