The death of British tech tycoon Mike Lynch in stormy seas off Sicily made you automatically curious about the fact that two days earlier Steven Chamberlain’s partner was fatally injured in a car accident while jogging.
As long-time business partners, they were tried as co-defendants in a fraud trial over the $11bn (£7bn) sale of software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard. Following the sale of Autonomy in 2011, Lynch co-founded cybersecurity firm Darktrace and Chamberlain was appointed CFO.
The Cambridge-based company combats cyber-attacks using software that learns the behavior patterns of each actor within an organization and detects unusual activity.
There is nothing so far to indicate that anything out of the ordinary happened in the two men’s respective accidents, which have been described as a tragic coincidence.
But adding to the intrigue are the business partners’ ties to the world of UK and US intelligence. We are referring to spy connections.
Lynch’s co-founded Darktrace with former UK intelligence officials in 2013. One of the co-founders was Stephen Hayter, a senior figure in MI5’s cyber defense and security team, who became CEO of Darktrace.
The $1 billion VC fund Invoke Capital, created after the sale of Autonomy, backed the University of Cambridge spin-out with an initial investment of £12 million.
Haxster hired thirty-year GCHQ veteran Andrew France as the company’s CEO, who later became a member of the company’s board of directors.
Lynch remained on the board until 2018, when he resigned after being accused of fraud.
Former MI5 chief Jonathan Evans also sat on Darktrace’s board for a time, while Jim Penrose, a 17-year veteran of the US National Security Agency (NSA), headed the company’s US operations.
Other former friends of the firm were technology director David Palmer, who previously worked at MI5 and GCHQ, and security director John Richardson who worked on cyber defense for the UK government.
In short, the company consisted almost exclusively of high-ranking ex-agents of major Western secret services.
But Lynchs’ espionage connections predate Darktrace.
His first company Cambridge Neurodynamics, which specialized in computer fingerprint recognition, had contracts with the UK intelligence services.
“They have the most interesting problems,” he told Wired magazine in 2002.
The company, which Chamberlain joined in 2005, used machine learning to analyze data from sources such as wiretaps and e-mails.
A fan of fictional spy James Bond, Lynch named the conference rooms at Autonomy’s headquarters after villains in the film series, including Dr No and Goldfinger.
Autonomy has also been involved in high-profile tenders from UK and US government agencies, including a contract to provide technical support to the US Homeland Security Office for intelligence analysis as part of the post-9/11 war on terror.
The “Peculiar” conditions of shipwreck
The exact causes of the wreck of the luxury yacht in Palermo remain an unsolved mystery. An impression was made by the position of the manufacturer of the fatal yacht who spoke of a long list of mistakes.
One of the safest ships in the world, practically unsinkable, Giovanni Constantino, founder and CEO of the listed company that owns the assets of Perini Navi Viareggio, which built the Bayesian, called the yacht in 2008.
Speaking to Corriere della Sera about the causes of the maritime tragedy in Palermo, he underlined the following:
“Everything that has been done reveals a very long list of mistakes. People were not supposed to be in the cabins, the boat was not supposed to be at anchor. And why didn’t the crew know about the state of turbulence? Passengers reported that the storm arrived unexpectedly, out of nowhere. This is not true. Everything was predictable. I have the weather maps right here in front of me. Nothing came suddenly.”
As the builder of the ill-fated sailboat stated, “A Perini vessel withstood a Category 5 Hurricane Katrina. Do you think it can’t withstand a hurricane from here? It is good practice, when the ship is at anchor, to have a watchman on the bridge, and if he had been there he could not have failed to see the storm coming. Instead, the boat took on water with guests still in their cabins. All it took was a 40 degree angle and those in the cabin found themselves with the door open: can you imagine a 60-70 year old man climbing out? They ended up in a trap. The poor people ended up like mice.”
The Connections of Mike Lynch with World’s Best Intelligence Services
A 2003 Guardian article described the company as “dealing in classified information” and “among the few UK commercial organizations set to profit from the Iraq war”.
He described the company’s technology as “advanced computer eavesdropping systems.”
At the time, the company had other contracts with US government agencies, including the military, NASA and US intelligence.
GCHQ and MI6 are also believed to have been clients.
Richard Pearl, a former Pentagon official, acted as one of the company’s directors.
A year after selling Autonomy, HP claimed the company was overvalued. In 2018, US prosecutors indicted Lynch and he was extradited to the US to stand trial in 2022.
The company’s chief financial officer, Sushovan Hussein, was convicted of fraud in 2018 and later sentenced to five years in prison.
However, Lynch got away unexpectedly on the grounds that he focused on the company’s technology and had little knowledge of its finances.
He was wealthy enough to afford the legal fees required to fight the case in US courts.
He was represented by the same defense attorney for the dead pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
The conclusion is that no one can say that something happened that caused this particular wreck, but only the fact that Mike Lynch was connected to the biggest secret services on the planet to such an extent and knew so many things creates a lot of suspicion that maybe behind something else is hidden from this tragedy.
Conclusion
The legal team of the blessed billionaire had an easy task because they stepped on the rightful ones. Many similar frauds had been acquitted at the behest of the American state. In these cases the judges cannot change the agreement. Games of “markets” are those where someone wins and someone loses. The judges did their job because there was no other way. So the second half was played on asphalt and sea where they were painted red.
The fraud was tens of billions. Both cases of Autonomy associates are most likely murders. The two associates were killed shortly after the trial, a few days apart. Anyone who thinks it’s random probably hasn’t lost 22 billion to fraud. The American giant not only established itself but also used state secret services. Possibly, the ship’s weather forecasting systems were blinded so the crew didn’t know anything. The fishermen of the area did not go out to fish that day because they knew the weather. How could such a ship not know the weather?
The captain was probably given many future privileges, so that with the right maneuvers the ship would sink at the right time and miraculously he would be saved. Of course, there is also the possibility that the captain will later die by accident, so that there are no witnesses.
Almost everyone in the inflatable lifeboat was the crew, who are either cowardly little people or were at bay, having plenty of time to ensure that the passengers were saved first and then they, but they took the inflatable lifeboat first and crashed it. In the lifeboat was almost exclusively the crew, let alone one or two other passengers, while the rest of the rescued were in the sea and were picked up by the other boat.
The car “accident” is easily set up with a little attention. However, attacking a well-guarded billionaire requires a different kind of trick. Things are simple, the guys WANTED the whole planet to know that it was about revenge. That’s why the “accidents” happened within 2 days of a time difference. To fear the next ones who will think to dare to do the same.
