The bodies of those who died after the billionaire Mike Lynch’s Bayesian superyacht sunk off the coast of Sicily have been flown back to their families by private jet.
Italian publication Giornale di Sicilia reported post-mortem examinations were completed at a Palermo hospital and the bodies have now been returned.
Fifteen of the 22 passengers and crew survived the incident by clambering onto an inflatable liferaft.
But the bodies of Mr Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah and four other people were found by divers on board. Post-mortem examinations suggest they had been trapped in a room below deck.
Jonathan Bloomer, the international chairman of Morgan Stanley Bank; his wife Judith, a psychotherapist; Christopher Morvillo, a US lawyer; and his wife Neda, a jewellery designer, also died in the sinking.
The body of the yacht’s chef, Recaldo Thomas, was also recovered floating near the wreckage.
The Bayesian was hit by a suspected “downburst” of strong wind early on 19 August. The 56m-long, £30 million yacht drifted for about 400 metres from its anchorage near the fishing port of Porticello before sinking.
It was also reported Italian Navy divers have recovered video surveillance equipment from the wreckage of the Bayesian superyacht that could explain how it sank.
Several highly specialised divers from the Italian navy’s special forces Comsubin unit are now combing the wreckage, which is around 50 metres underwater, on behalf of prosecutors investigating the sinking.
They recovered parts of the deck, computer material, video surveillance systems, hard drives and various other equipment on Thursday.
The electronics removed from the yacht will now be sent to a laboratory outside Italy to deduce whether they are still readable after sitting for weeks underwater.
A prosecutor in Termini Imerese in Sicily has also placed the captain of the yacht and two British crew members under investigation. This does not necessarily mean charges will follow.