Round noon on Feb. 2, a big wave started its gradual rumble towards the Aisland 1, an 800-ton deck barge floating within the waters between Dubai and Iran. On board the vessel had been its residents of greater than a yr: a 58-year-old Italian businessman named Samuele Landi, three sailors, a cook dinner and 5 cats.
Landi — the ship’s captain — was a gifted laptop programmer who in a earlier life had been the chief government of Eutelia, a telecommunications firm. He fancied himself an Italian Steve Jobs, although John McAfee, the cybersecurity entrepreneur turned tax fugitive, might need been a extra becoming comparability. An avid skydiver and motorbike racer, Landi favored to dwell on the sting: of the world, of the regulation and of life itself. He had made a profession of unique offshore monetary schemes; now, adrift, he had turn out to be one with them.
“I’ll die at sea for positive,” he instructed Oswald Horowitz, a filmmaker who had visited him the earlier December. “I’m not going again.”
The barge was Landi’s greatest journey but. A rusting rectangular hulk with the footprint of a giant industrial plane, the Aisland had a deck fitted with six blue delivery containers bolted in place. These had been the dwelling quarters, outfitted with solar-powered air-conditioners and a desalination system. The barge was in any other case plagued by tools: ropes, crates, followers, tanks of oil and water, a freezer containing kilos of pink meat, and a sack of bolstered concrete combine for repairs. A Liberian flag flapped within the breeze.
The story of how Landi ended up dwelling on a leaky barge some 30 miles off the shore of Dubai is a story of self-preservation. For over a decade, Landi had been a person on the lam. He wasn’t a violent prison; nor was he a very needed particular person, within the grand scheme of issues. However since Eutelia was declared bankrupt in 2010 and a few of its executives, together with Landi, had been very publicly tried and convicted of chapter fraud, Landi has been a fugitive from Italian justice — and on land, his choices had all however run out.
What distinguished Landi from a run-of-the-mill fraudster, although, was the outlandishness of his maneuvers, which exploited each loophole the globe needed to supply. Landi was a libertarian who sought freedom from meddling governments and their cumbersome rules, however in a choose few nations, he discovered keen accomplices. Landi hid cash in Switzerland, skated round extradition treaties whereas dwelling comfortably in Dubai, registered firms in bespoke tax-free zones, procured diplomatic credentials from Liberia, dabbled in crypto and, lastly, took to the ocean, the place there was nobody to inform him what to do.
Landi was in a position to pull this off due to his information of the offshore world, and his story makes him an ideal information to this huge archipelago of third areas. It additionally “embodies all of the methods legal guidelines may be evaded by these jurisdictions, whether or not it’s tax legal guidelines, extradition legal guidelines, regulatory legal guidelines or benefiting from regulatory quirks,” stated Vanessa Ogle, a Yale professor engaged on a e book in regards to the historical past of the offshore world. “When you develop a thoughts for it, an entire vary of alternatives arises.”
Whereas he lived on the barge, Landi was dreaming up an bold plan to determine a floating, modular and utterly sovereign city-state in worldwide waters close to the nation of Mauritius. This much-discussed idea is called “seasteading” — like homesteading, simply wetter — and its adherents are a mixture of survivalists, libertarians and wannabe pirates.
Landi’s barge was a heap, however he was in a position to hold it afloat within the comparatively calm waters of the Persian Gulf by pumping out water and having his crew patch holes when it sprang a leak.
On that day in February, although, their repairs didn’t maintain, and the offshore existence that Landi had constructed for himself was instantly imperiled: not by the legal guidelines of countries, for as soon as, however by the legal guidelines of nature.
Tax Shelters and a Well timed Escape
So far as anybody can show, Samuele Landi lived as a law-abiding personal citizen in Arezzo, Italy, till his 30s, when he began working within the telecommunications business. Landi’s first firm, Plug It Worldwide, purchased easy-to-remember telephone numbers from the Italian authorities, then leased them out at a premium to dial-in fortune tellers, astrologers, climate experiences and, in fact, telephone intercourse operators. Plug It was fined for deceptive shoppers about its charges.
In 2003, Plug It merged with one other firm to turn out to be Eutelia, a telephone and web supplier. Eutelia was largely a household affair — there have been Landis serving as managers and executives, Landis controlling shares and Landis increasing the enterprise overseas. Samuele Landi, who served as Eutelia’s chief government alongside two of his brothers, led the corporate as its shares started buying and selling on the Milan Inventory Trade in 2004.
In 2006, the Italian monetary police started auditing Eutelia’s books for attainable fraud. The authorities found a lot — tens of tens of millions of euros had been improperly accounted for — and, within the course of, discovered themselves immersed within the methods of the offshore monetary world.
Beginning as early as 2002, in line with sentencing paperwork from Arezzo’s prison courtroom, Samuele Landi and 5 of his family members had used a collection of falsified or inaccurate invoices to siphon cash from the enterprise and into tax shelters around the globe: a shell firm on the Polynesian island of Niue; a UBS account in Monaco; a Romanian L.L.C. in Bucharest totally owned by a Swiss agency. The company automobiles they used had few or no workers, produced no tangible work and, in line with prosecutors, existed primarily for the aim of draining Eutelia’s coffers.
Circuitous worldwide grifts aren’t unusual — contemplate the revelations within the Panama Papers, the Paradise Papers and different knowledge leaks that detailed how rich firms and people conceal cash by advanced offshore entities. However Eutelia was a middling enterprise in an abnormal Tuscan city, not a high-flying household workplace or a lawyered-up conglomerate with branches around the globe.
Samuele Landi contested Eutelia’s insolvency. He was additionally antagonizing workers. In November 2009, whereas investigations into Eutelia had been underway, workers of a Eutelia division that had been spun off occupied their workplaces in Rome. They camped out of their cubicles for 2 weeks, complaining that they hadn’t been paid in months. The employees blamed Landi — who was nonetheless in cost — for his or her troubles, and a picture of Landi posing, pirate-style, with a cartoon-villain expression and a cutlass between his tooth turned a logo for Eutelia’s misdeeds.
Landi hit again in a way extra befitting a mob boss than a telecom government. With 15 personal guards by his facet, he marched into the workplaces at 5 a.m. one November day, aiming to disrupt the sit-in. Wielding crowbars, the lads dragged the employees out of the workplaces and into the foyer. A television reporter covering the occupation then called the police, who took Landi and his males away.
By the point Eutelia’s courtroom date got here round, Landi had high-tailed it for Dubai. On the time, the city-state levied no taxes on overseas residents, had no extradition settlement with Italy and was creating a status as a spot the place criminals — and their cash — may discover secure haven.
These lodging allowed Landi to determine himself quietly within the United Arab Emirates, and to maneuver his spouse and their kids there.
Within the metropolis stuffed with expatriates, Landi blended in. Professionally, he picked up the place he had left off. In 2010, he registered Kryptotel, an encrypted mobile-phone software program firm, in Web Metropolis, one among Dubai’s many free financial zones — gated enclaves the place overseas firms get pleasure from particular perks.
At Kryptotel, Landi employed Italians — amongst them, an outdated skydiving pal, in line with LinkedIn. Commenting on a Fb thread about his exploits, Landi wrote that he had sought out purchasers who may pay him in cryptocurrencies and would convert the digital currencies into {dollars} or dirhams when he wanted money.
Landi clearly had entry to funds, although how a lot of the Eutelia loot ended up in his pockets and for a way lengthy was not clear. Within the sentencing doc, Italian prosecutors famous that Landi beforehand had entry to accounts on the Banca della Svizzera Italiana in Lugano and Julius Baer, a Swiss personal financial institution that reached a half-billion-dollar settlement in 2016 with america for serving to wealthy People keep away from tax. Moreover, Landi had energy of lawyer over a financial institution vault and different accounts.
No matter his web price, it was sufficient for a $10,000-a-month villa, a driver and automotive, personal college for his kids and journeys overseas for his household.
From his villa in Dubai’s Palm Jumeirah, an archipelago of artificial islands, Landi adopted the information as lawsuits in opposition to him, his members of the family and different Eutelia executives made their manner by the Italian courts. In 2015, Arezzo’s prison courtroom sentenced Landi’s uncle, cousin and brother to between two and 4 and a half years in jail for fraudulent chapter and misappropriation of funds. Their appeals failed, and the uncle died in 2016. Two different brothers took plea bargains. The surviving Landis served their time largely underneath home arrest as a result of they’d no prior convictions, in line with a prosecutor.
Samuele Landi’s exit, which made headlines again house, had brought on pressure throughout the household, stated Paolo Casalini, a good friend of Landi’s and a former editor of an area information web site, Informarezzo.com, which Landi purchased and took over in July 2022. “His brothers didn’t even discuss to him anymore,” stated Casalini, who was in common contact with Landi through the years.
(Landi’s spouse and sons didn’t reply to requests for remark; neither did the members of the family named within the lawsuits. His eldest daughter despatched a short assertion saying her father was “a very variety particular person.”)
Samuele Landi was sentenced to a complete of 14 years in jail in absentia for his position in Eutelia’s insolvency, however in Dubai, he was untouchable. There have been hometown rumors that he had been arrested in 2017, however Casalini stated Landi shrugged them off by sending a photograph of himself on the seaside, studying the newspaper: “Landi felt secure in Dubai,” Casalini stated.
I requested if Landi appeared to overlook Arezzo.
“He would say no,” Casalini stated. “He stated, ‘I’d solely come again right here for my mom.’”
The Perks of Diplomatic Immunity
On March 22, 2022, Liberia’s president, George Weah, landed in Dubai for a diplomatic go to. On the terminal, a delegation of Liberian officers was there to greet him. Standing a great half-foot taller than his friends was a person with a shiny, white, bald head: Samuele Landi.
Landi was there in his capability as Liberia’s honorary consul normal to Dubai. He had discovered one more loophole. This appointment by Liberia — a rustic he was by no means a resident of and to which he had no connection by blood or marriage — had successfully granted him immunity from prosecution in Dubai by making him a diplomatic envoy.
He had made his first inroads in Liberia throughout his Eutelia days, when the agency purchased a 60 p.c stake price $21 million in a Monrovia firm known as Netcom Liberia. For an offshore man of thriller and sick reputation, a diplomatic put up is a protecting cloak that brings with it various levels of immunity, to not point out an alternate passport to journey and transact with; a brand new id untethered from the previous; and a noble (honorable, even) foil.
Within the offshore world, it is a “time-honored technique” going again to the Twenties, Vanessa Ogle, the historian, stated. “Honorary consuls can transfer property throughout borders,” she stated. “They’ll have vehicles with diplomatic plates, the immunity and privilege of not being searched and a diplomatic pouch” to hide paperwork. In 2022, the Worldwide Consortium of Investigative Journalists found 500 present and former honorary consuls had been accused of crimes or embroiled in controversy.
Many honorary consul gigs are only for present. Not Landi’s. Based on three individuals who frolicked with Landi in Dubai, he threw himself into the job, soliciting funds from rich Arab donors to construct a hospital close to Monrovia and internet hosting a Liberian Independence Day occasion at his house. He even used his consular powers to assist repatriate over dozens of Liberian home employees who had been trafficked into Oman. (Alieu Massaquoi, Liberia’s ambassador to the United Arab Emirates, stated in a WhatsApp message that he had not met Landi in particular person and that his workplace had no report of him. Massaquoi was appointed to his put up in 2023, after Landi had moved offshore.)
Landi additionally used his time in Dubai to seek the advice of for a start-up run by an Emirati sheikh. The corporate, Blue Carbon, made plans to purchase up giant areas of Liberian forest to offset carbon emissions.
In Could 2022, after a Liberian businessman in america was apprehended with a pretend diplomatic credential, Liberia declared it might recall all of its diplomatic passports. That summer time, the Emirates extradited an Italian drug trafficker and mobster who had been dwelling in Dubai for years.
At this level, Landi mapped out his subsequent transfer: one which took him offshore not simply in a metaphorical sense, however in a bodily one, too.
The Closing Frontier
Landi stunned virtually everyone when he moved onto the Aisland 1 on Dec. 22, 2022, with a stray cat and 4 kittens he had present in a field. His colleagues and pals knew nothing of his plans.
“He needed to maintain his barge a shock,” stated Casalini, who discovered of Landi’s transfer after he posted about it on-line. “I’m a relaxed particular person, however my response was, ‘Are you mad?’”
It was an affordable query. Landi had begun cryptically talking, in interviews, about desirous to “escape the Matrix” — a metaphor from the 1999 film for letting go of constructed social norms and false beliefs.
“He believed we dwell in a world the place we’re all the time being surveilled and manipulated — by 5G, by the Covid vaccines,” stated Clément Bonnerot, a journalist with Le Monde who had interviewed Landi whereas he was at sea. “He recognized as a hunted, persecuted man, for whom a very powerful factor was to be free.”
In December 2023, he instructed Tony Olsen, a libertarian podcaster: “If you’re libertarian like we’re, you need your freedom. And your freedom is completed when the liberty of others begins. That is the important thing level.”
Landi was adept at dwelling at sea. He grew greens and made plans to convey aboard chickens and cattle. He wrote a weblog, extolling the barge’s lack of mosquitoes and the beautiful sunsets and posted lighthearted articles about his adventures. (These have all since been taken down.) He relied on his crew, on semiregular deliveries of meals and provides from Dubai and on his Starlink satellite tv for pc connection, which allowed him to maintain Kryptotel, his cellphone firm, in enterprise.
Nonetheless, Landi had no illusions in regards to the longevity of his setup. “For the second,” he instructed Olsen, the podcaster, from one among his blue containers, Dubai “is tolerating us, however we can not keep.”
The used barge, which he stated he had purchased for $200,000, was falling aside, too, to the purpose that Landi and his males needed to educate themselves aquatic welding. “From inside, there are specific risks since you are uncovered to fuel,” he instructed Olsen. “However in case you weld from exterior, it’s tougher since you’re in a scuba diving go well with combating the present and waves.”
On land, on this planet of nation-states, Landi had reached the top of the road. And that little voice that had led him removed from house, underneath fictitious flags, to inhabit man-made isles and extraterritorial havens, was now telling him to assemble a nation of his personal.
He would purchase a brand new barge, twice as giant, that he would anchor within the Saya de Malha Financial institution, halfway between Seychelles and Mauritius. He would invite pals, household and like-minded libertarians to hitch him.
Landi even had an architect draw up plans. “On the highest deck, he wanted a spot the place a Gatling gun was going to be mounted,” stated Peter de Vries, a designer. “That’s one among these weapons that fires 1,000 rounds a minute — very heavy-duty stuff,” he continued. “I truly acquired the specs for the gun.”
I requested de Vries: Was Landi frightened of pirates, the state, his private enemies?
“Most likely the entire above,” de Vries replied. “The world.”
Nonetheless, Landi appeared as cheerful as ever. In footage that Oswald Horowitz, the filmmaker, took late in late 2023, Landi cuts the determine of a self-actualized man. His pores and skin shouldn’t be a lot sunburned as glowing, his snicker is mirthful, and his demeanor decided and somewhat droll, as if he noticed the humor in his predicament.
His endeavor would possibly sound like lunacy to most individuals — a rustic, on a barge, in worldwide waters, with weapons? — however for a veteran of offshore affairs like Landi, it adhered to a sure logic.
The universe during which Landi had sought shelter shouldn’t be so distinctive, in any case. In reality, it’s all round us, hiding in plain sight. We would purchase a bottle of Scotch in a duty-free store, or trip on a cruise ship with Panama’s or Liberia’s calmly regulated flag of comfort. We would gamble in a on line casino or admire a da Vinci that has spent many years in an extraterritorial warehouse. Our garments, our electronics, the computer systems we use for our desk jobs are more likely to have been manufactured in particular financial zones by international firms that behave kind of like Samuele Landi: hopping from jurisdiction to jurisdiction so as to earn a living and defend themselves as greatest they’ll from fiscal, regulatory, authorized or environmental duties.
Landi turned this ethos into a life-style. On the run, he made a life within the areas above, beneath and between nations
Landi despatched his final message to Horowitz on New 12 months’s Eve. It learn: “Transfer or die.”
A month later, Landi’s barge was round 30 miles from the Dubai coast when the rogue wave hit, breaching the hull and apparently breaking the barge in two. Two members of Landi’s crew survived by clinging onto items of wooden till a passing vessel rescued them the subsequent day. Landi and the 2 remaining seafarers weren’t so fortunate.
Based on Italian information experiences, Landi put out a name for assist, nevertheless it didn’t are available time.
His physique was discovered a number of days later, when it washed up on the seaside about 40 miles up the shoreline from Dubai. A relative flew out to determine the physique.
Within the seasteading neighborhood, Landi is remembered as a heroic determine. “Samuele Landi was the primary seasteader to dwell in worldwide waters for greater than a yr,” Joe Quirk, the president of the Seasteading Institute, a California nonprofit, wrote in an electronic mail. However the group declined to endorse or suggest his exploits. “Barges,” Quirk wrote, “will not be secure.”
Again in Arezzo, not everyone seems to be satisfied that Samuele Landi is deceased; rumors swirl in regards to the lack of DNA proof, and even the town’s mayor can’t fairly imagine that Arezzo’s most infamous exile is gone.
This was a person who discovered his manner round every thing: guidelines, taxes, borders, the regulation. Certainly, Samuele Landi would resurface.
Sabika Shah Povia contributed reporting.
