Coast guards rescued 15 passengers, but seven others were reported missing, including one person whose body was recovered later on Monday morning.
Firefighter divers made the recovery after reaching the boat located at a depth of 49 metres, half a mile from the coast.
One of the survivors is a one-year-old child who was taken to Palermo’s paediatric hospital.
The passengers on board the British-flagged boat were mainly from Great Britain, in addition to one New Zealander, one Sri Lankan, one Irish national and two with dual British-French citizenship.
The bodies are believed to be trapped inside the sailboat, rescuers said.
The president of Morgan Stanley International, Jonathan Bloomer, has been confirmed as one of six passengers missing.
The other missing passengers are his wife Anne Elizabeth Judith Bloomer, British tycoon Mike Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, Lynch’s lawyer Chris Morvillo and his wife Nada Morvillo.
Lynch, 59, is known as the ‘British Bill Gates’ and is the founder of the multinational computer company Autonomy.
Lynch had ended up at the centre of a high-profile fraud case and in June a US jury acquitted him of all charges relating to the sale of his software company to Hewlett-Packard in 2011.
His wife Angela Bacares was among those rescued.
The boat sank while it was moored in the harbor of Porticello at Santa Flavia near Palermo.
Carabinieri police, the 118 emergency medical service and the civil protection are aiding survivors.
ANSA
