When a Corporate Pirate Escapes to the High Seas

An interesting piece in the NYT Times of Jan. 12, 2025 described Samuele Landi, a wealthy Italian businessman, who chose to live on a barge to avoid being sent to prison. In 2006 Italian authorities discovered millions of euros had been siphoned from his company, Eutalia. The money had been sent to international tax shelters in Niue, Monaco, and Romania. Eutalia also wasn’t paying its employees, and they posted an image of Landi with a cutlass between his teeth. When the court date came, Landi had fled to Dubai, a preferred city for expatriates on the run. His uncle, cousin, and brother were found guilty and sentenced to prison in Italy. Landi was sentenced in absentia to 14 years. But he couldn’t be touched in Dubai because it had no extradition treaty with Italy.

While in Dubai, he became a Liberian honorary consul, which gave him diplomatic immunity. Most people regard that as an impressive credential, but it has a tarnished reputation. The Liberian leader, Charles Taylor, apparently granted honorary consul titles in exchange for political favors or financial contributions. Some appointees allegedly used their diplomatic status to engage in illegal activities, such as smuggling and money laundering. An investigation by journalists found that, since 2022, 500 honorary consuls had been accused of crimes or other controversy.

My family has some personal experience with another honorary consul. When we lived in Montreal, my son went to an exclusive private school. One of the big donors was a successful businessman who pledged a lot of money for a new wing. He was an honorary counsel for Liberia and a couple other countries. He was also indicted in New York for a pump-and-dump scheme. This is when people use false information to manipulate a stock price to rise, then sell their shares before the company crashes. Was this how he intended to generate his contribution to the building fund?

Because of the crimes from various honorary counsels Liberia eventually recalled all its diplomatic passports. That allowed Dubai to extradite an Italian drug trafficker, which made Samueli Landi nervous. So what did he do? He moved into an old barge that was falling apart and lived in international waters where there was no legal jurisdiction. He and the crew lived in shipping containers on deck. Landi couldn’t set foot on land so his crew had to go ashore to obtain supplies. Would you call that freedom? I think he had constructed his own prison, much like Pablo Escobar did at one point in Colombia. Landi planned to buy a state-of-the-art barge to improve his living conditions. He also wanted a gatling gun, presumably to fend off pirates.

Landi could escape law enforcement authorities, but not nature. In the early part of 2024 a storm hit the barge when it was about 30 miles off the coast of Dubai. The barge broke in two. Landi and two of his crew did not survive. His body was found on the Dubai beach. A relative identified him and Italian authorities did DNA analysis and an autopsy. The authorities claim the dead man was Landi, but many in Italy are unconvinced.