Encrypted_beard on Nostr: The entrepreneur from Arezzo had been convicted of the bankruptcy of Eutelia and then ...

The entrepreneur from Arezzo had been convicted of the bankruptcy of Eutelia and then ended up implicated in suspicious business with green credits. His latest adventure: to found a barge-State in international waters. And here he would die during a shipwreck

In March 2022, George Weah's private jet, then president of Liberia, landed at Dubai Airport. Waiting for the former Milan champion on the track, on a red carpet, there is a middle-aged Italian dressed in full point. The two exchange a nod of understanding before greeting each other with an elbow tap.

That man is Samuele Landi. He is there as the consul of the African country in the United Arab Emirates. For the Italian state, however, Landi is not a diplomatic rampant, but a fugitive. With a final 8-year sentence behind it for the fraudulent bankruptcy of Eutelia. The telecommunications giant ruined in the late 2000s, leaving thousands of workers on the street.

Landi will never serve a day in prison. In all likelihood, his life ended tragically in early February when a storm broke the rusty barge that, for just over a year, the Aretino was trying to turn into a utopian tax haven floating in international waters. The last stop of a long run full of intrigue. From the escape from Italian justice to the golden escape in Dubai, through 'green' affairs in Africa and relations with sheikhs and heads of state.

Scion of a family of Arezzo insurers, Samuele Landi invents an entrepreneur at the turn of the new millennium. In a garage he founded a telecommunications company that would later become known throughout Italy as Eutelia. In a short time, an important slice of a growing market is carved out: that of paid numbers. Horoscopes, weather services, doers.

THE BARGE IN OSWALD HOROWITZ'S FILM, “THE LEGEND OF LANDI: REQUIEM FOR A FLOATING CITY”

From this Far West the money comes in an avalanche. With a turnover of hundreds of millions of euros, Eutelia embarks on a faraonic campaign of acquisitions. It is listed on the stock exchange and then takes the remains of the former Olivetti. The ascent seems unstoppable.

But the shiny golden patina hides a mountain of debt. The gears of the toy start jamming, one after the other, very quickly. In 2008, an inspection by the Guardia di Finanza detected accounting irregularities. It will then be discovered that while the losses were soaring, Landi & co would have adjusted the accounts and made about 100 million disappear abroad. The mask has fallen: after weak attempts to resolve the crisis with the government and trade unions, for Eutelia nothing remains but the road to failure.

When in July 2010 the financiers show up with an arrest warrant for fraudulent bankruptcy, there is no longer a trace of Samuele Landi. It's in Dubai. He says that he had his residence there for some time and that he was simply looking for more freedom. The lack of an extradition treaty with the United Arab Emirates certainly guarantees it.

Samuele Landi will never return to Italy. But, in his absence, the trials continue and the convictions flake. Eight years of imprisonment in the main section, in Florence – now definitive – and six years and six months on appeal in a separate procedure in Rome. Landi will never accept the sentences, repeatedly shouting the conspiracy from Dubai's buen retiro. 'There is no evidence that I stole a single euro,' he told L'Espresso a few months ago. 'It's all the result of the corruption of Italian judges.'

Meanwhile, the aretino builds a new life on the shores of the Persian Gulf. First he launches into the production of high-security mobile phones with military-grade encryption. Then he embarks on the road to diplomacy, becoming consul of Liberia in the United Arab Emirates. Landi prides itself on having facilitated the construction of hospitals, roads and sports centers in the African country.

The role also opens the doors to Dubai's most prestigious buildings. One day Landi accompanies a Liberian delegation from Ahmed Dalmook Al Maktoum, a member of the Dubai royal family. Sheikh has in mind a pharaonic project that, on paper, could bring in billions of dollars. It wants to produce carbon credits – green certificates used by companies and states to offset their own CO2 emissions – on a scale never seen before. To do this, Al Maktoum aims to make deals with governments of developing countries, taking control of huge stretches of tropical forest behind the promise of rich investments.

LANDI IN THE EUTELIA HEADQUARTERS

Landi becomes an advisor to Blue Carbon, the Sheikh's enterprise. The aretino claims to have only provided computer advice. But, last year, to sign one of the first preliminary agreements with Blue Carbon is precisely the Liberia of which he is a representative. Agreements will then follow with dozens of African and Caribbean countries, which if turned into contracts, could put territories as large as the United Kingdom in the hands of the Sheikh.

Al Maktoum's plans are causing alarm. For the fight against climate change, first of all, carbon credits from the protection of forests tend to overestimate the amount of CO2 captured with the result that they become more functional to greenwashing operations than to a real cut in emissions.

But, according to Alexandra Benjamin, a forestry expert for the Fern association, the problems go further. 'These agreements are a serious threat to the African rural communities that live in those forests,' he tells L'Espresso. The fear is that, in order to carry out the sheikh's plans, the indigenous peoples will be evictioned or deprived of the resources necessary for their livelihood.

Concerns are lawful. The Government of Liberia 'will provide total facilitation to Blue Carbon' in order to guarantee 'full rights, without clutter, on the land' that is part of the programme. This is what is written in the preliminary agreement between the Emirates company and the Monrovia executive of which L'Espresso has read.

Blue Carbon is very busy. The goal is to put the projects on display at the global climate conference held in December 2023 right in Dubai. Samuele Landi, however, does not participate in Cop 28.

For almost a year now, he has moved to his floating island in the Persian Gulf. It is an old barge just over half the size of a football field anchored in international waters. Landi lives there with four all-rounders of Indian origin. The accommodation is spartan: a series of containers, a few solar panels for electricity and a small desalination plant for drinking water.

But Landi dreams big. It aims to expand to create an autonomous organization capable of hosting 5 thousand people, self-financing with online operations including the mining of cryptocurrencies. Among the benefits are those of not having to pay taxes and being even further away from the Italian authorities, who, in the meantime, have begun to repatriate some heavy fugitives from Dubai. 'The idea is to create a place where people can live without being subject to the matrix,' Landi told L'Espresso in one of the last talks. 'No one can force me to eat insects or fake meat or tell me what bites I should get.'

It is the ultimate expression of libertarian utopia. Landi's idea is not new. Already in the 60s the Bolognese Giorgio Rosa had tried to found a State-palafitta off the coast of Romagna. But the dream of seasteading has been back in vogue recently, fomented by anxiety about pandemics and climate destruction and the paranoid terror of the tyrant state. Dozens of projects are in the process of being conceived, also counting on the support of Silicon Valley billionaires such as Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal. Landi, however, considers himself a true pioneer. 'A lot of people talk about seasteading but they only do it from the comfort of their own office,' Landi said a few months ago from his barge. 'I am aware of the challenges and benefits of being here to take this test.'

On February 2, communications between the aretino and his family members are suddenly interrupted. The following day the Dubai Coast Guard retrieves two shipwrecked people of Asian origin in the middle of the sea. They are workers on the barge. Subsequently, two unrecognisable corpses are re-recognised. The fingerprints of one of them correspond to those of Samuele Landi, according to the press. Only the result of the DNA test can give the final confirmation.

But what happened? British filmmaker Oswald Horowitz, who is making a film on the floating island, spoke to one of the survivors. He tells that a strong storm broke the rusty barge sharply, throwing its inhabitants, including Samuele Landi, into the water. The two survivors would cling to wooden planks before being pushed away by the wind. For the others there would have been nothing to do.