By Emma Bubola and Jeffrey Gettleman
Italian authorities have opened a formal investigation into the actions of James Cutfield, the captain of the superyacht that sank last Monday off the coast of Sicily, killing seven of the 22 people on board, including British tech billionaire Mike Lynch.
Cutfield is under investigation for possible manslaughter and to determine whether his actions negligently caused the shipwreck, said his lawyer, Aldo Mordiglia.
In Italy, being put under investigation does not necessarily imply that formal charges will follow, and so far, Italian authorities have not imposed any restrictions on Cutfield’s movements, Mordiglia added.
Prosecutors said Saturday said that while they had not issued any arrest warrants for the crew, they expected that the crew members would cooperate with the investigation and be available to answer more questions. On Monday, most crew members were still in Italy. Prosecutors did not offer additional comment Monday on news of the investigation.
The 183-foot vessel, the Bayesian, sank as Lynch and his friends were celebrating his acquittal from a bruising fraud case. The boat sank early last Monday morning about half a mile off the port of Porticello, a small Italian fishing town, after it was caught in a strong, sudden storm.
Many questions remain as to why such a massive, luxurious and expensive boat could sink so quickly as another boat nearby weathered the storm largely unscathed.
The CEO of the company that acquired the yacht’s manufacturer has been adamant that the boat was virtually unsinkable if all the correct procedures to operate it were followed. But many experts in the maritime field have pushed back, warning that too little is known about the accident and the weather conditions at the time to come to any conclusions.
Mordiglia declined to comment further on the case. Several crew members approached by The New York Times declined to comment.
For a week, the crew has been staying at a sprawling resort by Porticello, one of the few large hotels in the area. The resort has become an unlikely shelter for the survivors of such a dramatic accident, with loud group dances, speakers blaring Italian summer hits and water aerobics directives for the families vacationing.
The crew members, some of whom were in their early 20s, kept to themselves and often sat together at the resort’s bar or restaurant, reacting with a firm “no comment” every time a Times reporter approached them.
Italian divers with the country’s firefighters corps found six bodies inside the yacht’s cabins. Italian authorities said Saturday that they had not conducted any autopsies yet, and they said that they were going to extract the boat from underwater, a process that was likely to take at least several weeks.
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