Business | A Fugitive Businessman, Done In by One Law He Couldn’t Dodge
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/business/samuele-landi-offshore-seastead.html
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Credit… Valentin Tkach A Fugitive Businessman, Done In by One Law He Couldn’t Dodge
Fleeing fraud charges, Samuele Landi evaded extradition treaties, dabbled in crypto, procured diplomatic credentials and took advantage of all the offshore world has to offer.
Credit… Valentin Tkach
By Atossa Araxia Abrahamian
Published Jan. 7, 2025 Updated Jan. 11, 2025 Around midday on Feb. 2, a large wave began its slow rumble toward the Aisland 1, an 800-ton deck barge floating in the waters between Dubai and Iran. On board the vessel were its residents of more than a year: a 58-year-old Italian businessman named Samuele Landi, three sailors, a cook and five cats.
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Landi — the ship’s captain — was a gifted computer programmer who in a previous life had been the chief executive of Eutelia, a telecommunications company. He fancied himself an Italian Steve Jobs, though John McAfee, the cybersecurity entrepreneur turned tax fugitive, might have been a more fitting comparison. An avid skydiver and motorcycle racer, Landi liked to live on the edge: of the world, of the law and of life itself. He had made a career of exotic offshore financial schemes; now, adrift, he had become one with them.
“I will die at sea for sure,” he told Oswald Horowitz, a filmmaker who had visited him the previous December. “I’m not going back.”
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Samuele Landi’s barge, the Aisland 1, was equipped with shipping containers that served as living quarters. Credit… Oswald Horowitz/Maverick Moves The barge was Landi’s biggest adventure yet. A rusting rectangular hulk with the footprint of a large commercial aircraft, the Aisland had a deck fitted with six blue shipping containers bolted in place. These were the living quarters, equipped with solar-powered air-conditioners and a desalination system. The barge was otherwise littered with equipment: ropes, crates, fans, tanks of oil and water, a freezer containing pounds of red meat, and a sack of reinforced concrete mix for repairs. A Liberian flag flapped in the breeze.
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