Fleeing fraud charges, Landi evaded extradition treaties, dabbled in crypto, procured diplomatic credentials and took advantage of all the offshore world has to offer. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
AROUND midday on Feb 2 last year, a large wave began its slow rumble toward the Aisland 1, an 800-ton deck barge floating between the United Arab Emirates and Iran.
Onboard was its captain, Samuele Landi, a 58-year-old Italian businessman, along with three sailors, a cook, and five cats.
Landi, once a gifted computer programmer and CEO of telecommunications company Eutelia, had reinvented himself as a fugitive libertarian.
His ambitions were as vast as the sea he now called home. He envisioned creating a floating, sovereign city-state in international waters, a concept known as “seasteading”.
“I will die at sea for sure,” Landi told a filmmaker who had visited him earlier.
Landi’s barge was a heap, but he was able to keep it afloat in the relatively 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, though, their repairs did not hold, and the offshore existence that Landi had built for himself was suddenly imperilled: not by the laws of nations, for once, but by the laws of nature.
Landi’s path to the Aisland 1 was paved by scandal.
His first company, Plug It International, bought easy-to-remember phone numbers from the Italian government, then leased them out at a premium to dial-in fortunetellers, astrologers, weather reports and, of course, phone sex operators.
Plug It was fined for misleading consumers about its fees.
In 2003, Plug It merged with another company to become Eutelia, a phone and internet provider.
Landi, who served as Eutelia’s CEO alongside two of his brothers, led the company as its shares began trading on the Milan Stock Exchange in 2004.
In 2006, the Italian financial police began auditing Eutelia’s books for possible fraud.
The authorities discovered plenty – tens of millions of euros were improperly accounted for – and, in the process, found themselves immersed in the ways of the offshore financial world.
By 2010, Eutelia had declared bankruptcy, and Landi fled to Dubai.
The city-state, with no extradition treaty with Italy and a reputation as a haven for financial fugitives, became his safe haven.
There, he founded Kryptotel, an encrypted mobile-phone company, and lived comfortably in a villa on Palm Jumeirah.
But Italy wasn’t done with him.
By 2015, Landi was sentenced in absentia to 14 years for fraudulent bankruptcy. Despite this, he remained untouchable in Dubai.
On March 22, 2022, Liberia’s president, George Weah, landed in Dubai for a diplomatic visit. At the terminal, a delegation of Liberian officials was there to greet him.
Landi was also there, in his capacity as Liberia’s honorary consul-general to Dubai.
This appointment had effectively granted him immunity from prosecution in Dubai by making him a diplomatic envoy.
He had made his first inroads in Liberia during his Eutelia days, when the firm bought a 60% stake worth US$21mil in a Monrovia company called Netcom Liberia.
Then, in May 2022, when Liberia began recalling diplomatic passports after a scandal, Landi decided to move offshore – literally.
On Dec 22, 2022, Landi quietly relocated to the Aisland 1 with his cats.
For a year, he thrived on the barge, growing vegetables, planning to raise livestock and posting lighthearted updates about his life at sea.
Despite his ambition, Landi was realistic. “For the moment, Dubai is tolerating us, but we cannot stay,” he admitted on a podcast.
His barge, which he purchased for US$200,000, was falling apart, and he had grander plans for a larger, more sustainable vessel.
On that February day, the Aisland 1 faced its greatest challenge: a rogue wave.
The hull breached, and the barge split in two. Two crew members clung to debris and survived, but Landi and two others perished.
Landi’s body was discovered days later, washed ashore 65km from Dubai.
In the seasteading community, Landi is regarded as a trailblazer.
“He was the first seasteader to live in international waters for over a year,” said Joe Quirk, president of the Seasteading Institute.
Yet even admirers acknowledge the risks. “Barges are not safe,” Quirk noted.
Back in Arezzo, Italy, where Landi’s story began, not everyone is convinced of his death. For a man who evaded rules, taxes and borders, some believe a final escape isn’t beyond him. — ©2025 The New York Times Company
