Late final yr, Florentine prosecutors lastly recognized a fugitive by the bloated corpse washed up months earlier than on a seaside close to Dubai, bare and with most of its pores and skin lacking.
However an official DNA match to Samuele Landi, previously the boss of one in all Italy’s high telecom firms, solely deepened the thriller of his life.
Landi was a telecoms entrepreneur turned fraudster and fugitive who burned a path from Italy to west Africa to the Center East over the course of a decade.
The story of his life is vibrant and sophisticated — from a small-time dealmaker with an obvious sideline in telephone intercourse chatrooms, to diplomat and alleged acquaintance of sheikhs and presidents. Whilst he managed to keep away from being delivered to justice by worldwide authorities, he labored on a plan to promote carbon credit to Emirati royalty.
However after Landi’s final try at a redemption commerce went south, he determined to pursue his fortunes on the excessive seas. He deliberate to reside the remainder of his days in worldwide waters, with a quixotic dream of mining bitcoin by solar energy on a flotilla held along with big rubber bands.
His obvious demise at sea helps shine a light-weight on the gray areas in worldwide regulation and commerce the place it’s attainable for unorthodox characters to pursue profitable alternatives and beliefs of private freedom, with little regard for nationwide legal guidelines.
On the seafront of Monrovia, Liberia’s capital, is a crumbling villa, constructed on sand and now sinking quick, the ocean seeping additional into its cracked concrete foundations with each flip of the tide. It was constructed by Landi across the time of the worldwide monetary disaster.
I visited hoping it would maintain clues as to how this maverick govt had come to safe his standing as one in all West Africa’s high diplomats within the Center East.
However “now’s no good”, mentioned a thin man in lime-coloured trousers, who appeared on the villa holding a pair of keys. Two extra males emerged from behind the home, one carrying a sizeable kitchen knife and a truncheon. They wished to know why I used to be making an attempt to “break in” to a lifeless man’s flooded home at nightfall.
The guards had been watching the property since Landi’s disappearance. As soon as put comfy, they wished to grasp who he was, and what he did for Liberia. They led the best way inside, by way of garish yellow and turquoise rooms. Salt water splashed by way of a gaping gap within the entrance room at excessive tide. All over the place the ceiling was beginning to fall in. Painted lobster shells, grapes and slices of lemon danced on the terracotta tiles within the kitchen.
Within the late 2000s, Landi’s companies had been doing a roaring commerce. Born right into a rich household in Arezzo, a hilltop city in Tuscany, he had made his early fortunes with Plugit, which bought dial-up web with a side-hustle in erotic chat rooms. In his spare time, he competed in off-road automotive races throughout Africa.
In 2004 the corporate modified its identify to Eutelia following the acquisition of a rival, with Landi serving variously as chief govt and director.
In Italy, Eutelia laid fibre-optic cables and have become one its largest telecoms operators. However its heyday was shortlived. By 2008, Italian authorities have been investigating Eutelia’s accounting practices.
Prosecutors would later say that Landi helped orchestrate the sale of Eutelia’s failing IT enterprise to a subsidiary, Agile, in June 2009, after piling it with debt. He was additionally alleged to have helped falsify invoices and prices value €2.4mn within the previous years, contributing to Eutelia’s later demise.
In Eutelia’s annual accounts from the time and the accompanying court docket paperwork, one nation is talked about repeatedly. Prosecutors mentioned thousands and thousands have been misplaced in a Liberian “accounting desert”, together with for the acquisition of a airplane. Liberia can also be the place Eutelia allegedly ran a part of an operation to inflate its phone visitors, in change for charges that might have been value greater than €1mn from one other operator.
Landi’s companies used unorthodox means to get callers to remain on the road in his Liberian operations. At a name centre not removed from the positioning of the Monrovian villa, lots of of younger girls as soon as labored the telephones in three shift patterns.
The common wage was round $50 per week, however the longer they may maintain the lads phoning in, the extra they obtained paid, in keeping with Charles Konneh, who managed “Liberia Name Centre Inbound”. Landi was the final word boss of the operation, flying in together with his household for a go to and staying on the five-star Cape lodge on the opposite facet of city.
James Harding Giahyue, editor of The DayLight newspaper, despatched a younger feminine pal to work on the name centre, considering he had discovered her a decent job. “It was a intercourse enterprise, however extra of a telecoms enterprise,” he mentioned. “It was uncooked, the lads might say something.” (Konneh denied the conversations have been sexual.)
Landi made his final reported public look in Italy in November 2009, when he had a confrontation with laid-off workers at his workplace buildings in Rome. It was additionally the beginning of a authorized battle lasting effectively over a decade, leading to a jail sentence for eight years that he by no means served.
By the summer season of 2010, Eutelia and Agile have been formally bankrupt. The Monrovia name centre shut down abruptly across the similar time, Konneh says. He dumped its computer systems within the villa, from the place he says they have been stolen. By that point, Landi had fled to Dubai. He was declared a fugitive by the Italian court docket system — and stored a low profile for eight years.
However Landi’s involvement with Liberia didn’t finish there.
The nation’s economic system bears the scars of 14 years of brutal civil warfare that had resulted in 2003. Offshore oilfield exploration has but to yield a commercial success and in 2018, when former worldwide soccer star George Weah was elected president, the nation nonetheless lacked dependable roads and a practical well being system.
Weah wanted to draw overseas funding. His finest shot? The United Arab Emirates, which wished to splash its oil winnings to achieve affect in Africa. The UAE was the final place Weah had played professionally earlier than retirement.
Weah additionally had shut ties to Italy. The primary and solely African winner of Fifa’s World Participant of the 12 months award, Weah had left a mark at AC Milan, the place he performed within the Nineties.
By 2018, Landi was constructing a digital safety profession in Dubai. Fingers in Italian, Emirati and Liberian enterprise circles meant he was effectively positioned to play the function of intermediary within the African nation’s plans to draw funding.
There was one drawback. The UAE had begun taking steps to finalise an extradition treaty with Italy — whereas Landi was nonetheless a wished man at dwelling.
Landi managed to acquire a Liberian diplomatic passport, finally with the title of consul common to Dubai, in keeping with two Liberian diplomats. The appointment was with Weah’s backing, they mentioned. Below Liberia’s structure, all consul nominations should be permitted by the president. This gave the fugitive businessman a level of diplomatic immunity.
At first the connection was mutually useful. Landi turned a “lobbier for the nation as a complete”, mentioned a diplomat who labored with Landi. He was accountable for licensing the usage of Liberia’s flag to ships based mostly within the Center East and elements of the Mediterranean, together with Greece and Turkey.
Liberia is without doubt one of the world’s hottest flags of comfort, providing ship house owners fast and low-cost entry to registration in a rustic that will supply extra discretion than their very own.
Landi was the “quiet” and “very humble” man who was at all times on the town to make the lifetime of presidential envoys in Dubai simpler, mentioned Trokon Kpui, a minister underneath Weah.
And he obtained outcomes. The UAE agreed to pay for a $20mn solar-powered hospital, sports activities amenities and convoys of army vehicles for Liberia. Landi negotiated this sort of deal on behalf of Weah’s authorities, together with the hospital, mentioned George Nixon Kingsley, a pal of Landi’s in Liberia.
Kpui, nevertheless, mentioned that this sort of deal was “not likely accomplished by way of Landi,” however was as an alternative negotiated due to Weah’s “private relationship” with the UAE and with its management.
Commenting on Landi’s relationship to Weah, he mentioned: “Whereas it’s true Landi may need served in that [consul] place . . . he introduced personally to George Weah nothing.”
An individual who represents Weah didn’t present a remark.
The passport appeared to maintain Landi protected. Though Italy issued a request for arrest and extradition to Emirati authorities for Landi in April 2019, he was in a position to proceed residing in Dubai. The Italian overseas ministry informed the FT it solely “ascertained” that Landi held a Liberian passport greater than two years later.
On the similar time, Landi and his spouse Laura Gallorini have been additionally cultivating their very own community domestically. Landi began working as an adviser to an organization owned by Sheikh Ahmed Dalmook al-Maktoum, a Dubai royal and an power investor with a particular deal with West Africa.
In 2018, Landi had develop into the only shareholder of Liberia Power Inexperienced, a renewable power distributor, incorporation paperwork present. The next yr he appeared in a photograph taken to substantiate that the Abu Dhabi state-backed renewable power firm Masdar would grant $4mn to Liberia alongside the UAE authorities and a UN company. Masdar mentioned that Landi had attended in his capability as consul common for Liberia.
Landi additionally labored for Dubai-based cyber safety firm Kryptotel, which mentioned it produced the primary “crypto telephone” within the Center East and Africa, providing overseas governments military-grade encryption.
He proclaimed his innocence to anybody who would pay attention, together with in an look by video name on a pill held by his lawyer Amedeo di Segni at a press conference referred to as in Arezzo’s city sq. in September 2019.
“This man had quite a lot of creativeness,” with out being “essentially very clever”, says Jan de Smet, an unbiased Dutch investigator who researched Landi’s life as a part of his work on deforestation and corruption.
“He had this charisma factor over him and naturally the aura of the adventurer, the profitable adventurer . . . which was enticing possibly.”
Landi’s Liberian passport had been his protect. However its assure started to look much less sure, prompting his most dramatic transfer but.
After a Liberian nationwide was arrested and later convicted of cash laundering and wire fraud within the US in April 2022, Liberian embassies obtained orders to evaluation the allocation of diplomatic passports and to disclaim honorary positions to these underneath prison investigation.
Liberian authorities threatened to confiscate Landi’s passport, the diplomat who labored with Landi mentioned, leaving him weak once more to arrest and extradition.
Rising more and more determined, Landi moved in December 2022 on to a second-hand barge off the coast of Dubai in what he described as worldwide waters. He began working from there, joking that individuals must swim to achieve the consulate, whose workplace constructing he shut down.
Just some weeks in, a storm struck, leaving Landi and his crew surviving off fish for practically a month. They later laughed on the incident, calling the barge “Purring Island” after the cats who had survived with them.
Weah’s overseas minister Dee-Maxwell Saah Kemayah was much less amused, and accused Landi of underperforming on the much less glamorous sides of his diplomatic job. He was, for example, unable to barter on behalf of Liberian staff who had overstayed their visas in Dubai, as he was too nervous to go to the police station in particular person.
His request to be promoted to ambassador was vetoed by the UAE due to issues about his court docket instances in Italy and the actual fact he remained an Italian citizen, the 2 diplomats mentioned.
Working to maintain his choices open on dry land, he tried to faucet different highly effective contacts in Dubai.
In early 2023, Landi labored on a deal that might have given Emirati royal Maktoum’s firm Blue Carbon unique rights to generate and promote carbon credit on about 1mn hectares of Liberian land. Blue Carbon would obtain 70 per cent of the worth of the credit, in keeping with a draft proposal drawn up in July 2023.
Across the time the proposal was finalised, Landi obtained contemporary reassurances about his passport, one diplomat who labored with Landi mentioned.
Blue Carbon informed the FT in an announcement that it had not had any involvement in or affect over “the diplomatic standing or the private affairs of Mr. Landi”. His recommendation to the corporate had centered on block chain verification of environmental belongings.
“Any of Mr. Landi’s connections in regard to Liberia, have been unbiased to and never tied to any discussions of potential alternatives between Blue Carbon and the Liberian Authorities,” it mentioned.
Landi’s time residing on a barge apparently kindled an curiosity in seasteading, or making a life in worldwide waters.
He had helped construct a blockchain ledger for the self-proclaimed micronation of Liberland, a libertarian settlement based mostly on a land-bank between Croatia and Serbia, and have become pleasant with its “president” the Czech politician Vít Jedlička.
In November 2023 Jedlička visited Landi’s floating embassy. The waters have been uneven and two fishermen and a yacht salesman had refused to sail him there. Ultimately, he had hitched a trip on the speedboat that stored the barge provided with fruit and greens.
As waves buffeted the tiny craft, Jedlička, with a blond beard minimize right into a neat goatee, bumped about on an uncomfortable bench, looking for a spot the place his baby-blue linen jacket might keep away from being splashed. After about an hour, Landi hauled a humid Jedlička up the makeshift ladder on to the barge.
The 72m by 20m vessel was pocked with orange rust damage. However Landi felt he was effectively arrange there. For a lot of the yr he had been utilizing a Starlink satellite tv for pc connection to juggle his diplomatic roles in Dubai and Liberia. Landi had a desalination plant for water and photo voltaic panels for power, he individually informed Jedlička in an amateur video interview.
Landi’s long-term plan was to maneuver a bigger barge out by way of the Gulf of Oman and hundreds of miles south by way of the Indian Ocean nearer to the Saya de Malha, a sandbank the place he would use big rubber bands to tie a community of barges collectively, making a floating city.
He set out these plans to Oswald Horowitz, a freelance documentary maker who hung out with Landi on his barge that yr to make a characteristic about his life.
Jedlička, who hoped this might act as “a back-up territory in case of any bother in Europe”, mentioned Landi promised to fly the flag of Liberland. The flotilla would use photo voltaic power to mine bitcoin tax-free and promote carbon credit.
The 2 males talked all through the afternoon, excessive on what Jedlička referred to as the “intercourse attraction” of making their very own programs of presidency at sea, far outdoors the reaches of the EU’s creeping forms and even of Dubai’s notoriously light-touch strategy to taxes.
In the meantime, two crew members labored underwater to weld shut holes in air tanks that the storm earlier within the yr had brought on. Jedlička mentioned his goodbyes, realizing that Landi had stayed longer than deliberate on a ship that was more and more leaky.
In late 2023, Weah’s authorities misplaced a good common election and Landi’s entry to a passport was threatened once more.
Sara Beysolow Nyanti, Liberia’s new overseas minister, launched a campaign shortly after taking workplace to revoke improperly distributed diplomatic passports. Nyanti refused to permit even her personal safety employees to make use of diplomatic passports for quick observe by way of airports, a diplomat and a former lawmaker mentioned. Folks near Nyanti didn’t present a remark.
To make issues worse, the Blue Carbon deal didn’t transfer ahead. The FT and different shops reported on the finish of 2023 that communities who believed the land belonged to them had not been properly consulted on the deal. Blue Carbon denied failing to seek the advice of with communities.
“Carbon credit have been cursed round right here,” mentioned Wilson Tarpeh, who was head of the Environmental Safety Company on the time of the deal and flew out to satisfy Landi in Dubai to debate it. “Anybody who has tried to do them spherical right here will get overwhelmed up.”
Tarpeh mentioned he suggested in opposition to the deal however was overruled by Weah’s high brass. Once we met in Monrovia’s enterprise district, Tarpeh jabbed at an outsized calculator on his desk to indicate me the various thousands and thousands of tonnes of carbon wealth that could possibly be protected in Liberia’s inside.
However Rudolph Merab, head of Liberia’s Forestry Growth Authority, informed me that, on account of the dearth of curiosity from western patrons, “we have not seen one cent from the carbon we are absorbing from the forests”. He has been looking for new patrons for the credit however says he has lately been supplied solely $1 a tonne, effectively beneath the market worth.
Merab’s logging firm on the time was named in former dictator Charles Taylor’s warfare crimes trial as an alleged conduit for money to arm and direct Sierra Leone’s civil warfare. Merab denies that he or the corporate supported the warfare. He mentioned: “I’d by no means help a president combating warfare. Nothing I did was hidden from anyone.”
In February 2024, quickly after the collapse of the deal and the change of presidency, storms whipped the coast of Dubai.
Landi’s daughter Saahra informed Horowitz, the documentary maker, that her father’s barge had been break up in two, moments after she had spoken to him by video.
A physique discovered by coastguards at Umm al Quwain up the coast from Dubai was registered as Landi, regardless of being “completely unrecognisable” attributable to lacking pores and skin, in keeping with an individual who has seen the preliminary post-mortem report.
UAE police have been sluggish to reply. A demise certificates was issued on Could 9, months after the demise it declared on February 7, Italy’s overseas affairs ministry mentioned. Italy’s request for a DNA check was turned down by the UAE following opposition by Landi’s spouse Laura, it added.
The UAE overseas ministry and Dubai’s authorities didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Two diplomats informed me that Landi’s spouse, Laura, declined handy in Landi’s passport and stopped returning calls. The embassy employees weren’t invited to any funeral, whereas Laura didn’t verify whether or not he had died, even to Landi’s driver, they mentioned.
The FT was unable to achieve Laura immediately for remark.
These closest to Landi have been struggling final yr to course of occasions, weighing up all of the potential causes Landi had for selecting to vanish, alongside people who his enemies may need for wishing he’d disappear.
Landi had faked his personal demise twice earlier than and used the storm as a chance to do that for a 3rd time, one of many diplomats alleged.
“I’ve so many doubts that he’s truly lifeless,” Saahra informed Italy’s state-owned broadcaster Rai in Could. After seeing the physique, Saahra’s brother mentioned “it wasn’t him”, she informed the TV broadcast.
Amedeo di Segni, the lawyer who mentioned he represented Landi till final yr, informed the FT by e mail that he had “severe doubts about whether or not Samuele Landi is really gone.”
He later mentioned the FT’s model of occasions contained “a wealth of right data, however a few of it’s utterly incorrect, some could be very incomplete and a few important procedural particulars are lacking”. He declined to make clear additional with out fee.
However for the libertarians who adopted Landi’s journeys, there was a quite simple rationalization for his disappearance: a cavalier perspective to security at sea.
Landi’s barge “was rusting 3 times sooner than it ought to have been, it was simply unhealthy luck with a foul product from China”, mentioned Jedlička, the Liberland president.
Lastly, late final yr, the UAE agreed to ship the physique for forensic evaluation. Italy’s overseas affairs ministry mentioned a DNA check ordered by the Florence Public Prosecutor’s Workplace confirmed that the physique was Landi’s.
Segni informed me he had been knowledgeable by Florence’s attorney-general that the physique was Landi’s — however that an post-mortem report on reason behind demise had but to be filed.
“That’s deep,” regulator Wilson Tarpeh mentioned, once I requested whether or not there was any manner Landi might nonetheless be alive. “Possibly he went by way of some metamorphosis, once you resurface someplace with a brand new id.”
Now he considered it, he was unsure if he remembered assembly Landi in spite of everything.
Further reporting by Giuliana Ricozzi in Rome and Chloe Cornish in Dubai
