The former cabinet minister Lord Deben has said his missing friend the tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch was at the “beginning of a new life” when his yacht capsized in a violent storm off the coast of Sicily.
Lynch and his teenage daughter Hannah are among six people feared dead after the Bayesian was hit by a tornadic waterspout and rapidly sank early on Monday morning.
Deben, the former Conservative MP John Gummer, said Lynch was preparing for a new start after being cleared in June of fraud charges in the US relating to the purchase of his company, Autonomy, by Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
“This was the beginning of a new life for Mike,” Deben told Times Radio.
“He came back to be ready to start again. He made such a contribution to Britain. His companies have put British IT in the forefront, and he was going to do it again, and we pray that he can do it again.”
Deben accused the UK authorities of “disgraceful behaviour” in allowing Lynch to be extradited to the US to face the charges about “a transaction in Britain with British companies”. He said: “It should never have happened.”
Deben paid tribute to the way Lynch’s wife, Angela Bacares, who was rescued from the Bayesian, and two daughters supported him during the trial.
He said: “The daughters did so much for him, and yet, at the same time, achieved so much in their own work. The younger one [Hannah] getting into Oxford; the older one completing studies with very considerable aplomb. All that going on while still being there for him and supporting him and understanding that they could give to him what no one else could. So for that family to be torn apart in this way is really terribly sad.”
Deben, who lives close to Lynch’s home in Suffolk, used both the present and past tense when paying tribute to his missing friend.
He said: “Here in Suffolk, which he loved, he was a friend to so many people. Never flash, always part of the community.
“Gratitude is a typical word to use of him. He is a kind man. He puts himself into other people’s place, and that was really noticeable.”
He said Lynch would help him with computer problems. He said: “When I wanted to understand some complicated thing about IT, he would explain in the simplest manner. Even though he carried his immense knowledge and learning so lightly and was so available to anyone.”
Deben said Lynch was determined to campaign against the British extradition arrangements with the US. He said: “What he wanted to do was to change the law so that we can’t have any more of this one-sided extradition system. And he wanted to do it in a way to protect those who would not have had the resources to do what he did.
“He always wrote down his own achievements and wrote up the advantages that he was lucky enough to have, which was why he always thought of other people.”
