What the company has agreed to do
Tavolara Bay S.r.l., the Italian vehicle of the Brazilian group JHSF, has frozen the beach club and glamping plan at Villa Joy and asked the Corpo Forestale for permission to restore parts of the site. L'Unione Sarda reported on 16 October that the authorisation was granted after a joint inspection of the cove, and that the company intends to take away all the prefabricated modules placed next to the villa and return the building to its original residential use. The modules remain under judicial seizure. The paper calls the restoration permit the first step of a new approach rather than the end of the matter.
Jorge Pauli Niubo, country director for Italy at JHSF, is quoted saying the project «era stato debitamente autorizzato», that is, had been properly authorised, and that «quando le circostanze sono cambiate, abbiamo presentato un'istanza di autorizzazione», when circumstances changed, we filed an application for authorisation. He frames the decision as a matter of principle: «per noi, rispettare le regole e proteggere un luogo unico come l'Area Marina Protetta di Tavolara - Punta Coda Cavallo viene prima di qualsiasi interesse commerciale», for us, respecting the rules and protecting a unique place such as the Tavolara and Punta Coda Cavallo marine protected area comes before any commercial interest. He adds that «il nostro legame con Porto San Paolo, dunque, rimane solido», the bond with Porto San Paolo remains solid, while the company reserves its legal positions. The Italian is as published by L'Unione Sarda; the English is our translation.
How Cala Finanza reached this point
What JHSF marketed as Fasano Sardegna was a roughly 200 million euro vision of a five-star hotel, villas, a golf course and a marina, with a 2028 target, as Il Sole 24 Ore described it. What was actually filed at Cala Finanza was far smaller: converting the existing Villa Joy into a restaurant and a Fasano Al Mare beach club, plus removable glamping units, with no added volume.
It was approved through the government's ZES Unica fast-track, over negative opinions from the Regione Sardegna, the Soprintendenza di Sassari, the Corpo Forestale and the Culture Ministry. A petition gathered about 103,000 signatures, and a protest camp held the beach for months. On 30 June 2026 the Comune di Loiri Porto San Paolo revoked the rezoning that had enabled the scheme, and on 1 July the Dipartimento per il Sud revoked the ZES authorisation. On 29 July the TAR Sardegna refused to suspend those revocations, which left them in force while the case proceeds.
The criminal investigation
On 4 August the Procura di Tempio Pausania seized Villa Joy, unauthorised dirt tracks, the prefabricated modules and an area containing archaeological remains. On 11 August the preliminary investigations judge Marcella Pinna confirmed the seizure, upholding two central allegations: that Villa Joy had been used as a hospitality venue, operating as a restaurant with an equipped area of about 540 square metres, without authorisation, and that dirt tracks had been built without permission.
Five people are under investigation for alleged building and landscape offences. Sardiniapost named them as Felipe Goes De Faria, president of Tavolara Bay, Alberto Biancu, administrator of the company, Gian Paolo Biancu, a contractor and former mayor of Loiri Porto San Paolo, and Cristian Pireddu and Sergio Domenico Gonario Russo, directors of works. Being under investigation in Italy is not a charge and not a conviction, and all five are presumed innocent. The prosecution's reported position is that the ZES authorisation was itself unsound, because a change of use was not possible on a property that had been through a building amnesty.
What is not yet settled
The TAR hearing on the merits of the company's appeals is listed for December, and the Region's own appeal is set for 17 February 2027. Whether an earlier hearing on the demolition and restoration orders still stands has not been reported. The Soprintendenza's archaeological assessment has not been published. Tavolara Bay has filed no damages claim against the State and has only reserved its positions. It has not been reported whether removal of the prefabs has actually begun, and JHSF has announced no change to its wider Italian programme.
The environmental group GrIG, which has followed the case throughout, welcomed the retreat on 17 October but argued that attempts at property development on that coast may not be over. It also notes that ravvedimento operoso, the voluntary remedy under article 181, comma 1-quinquies of legislative decree 42/2004, can extinguish a landscape offence if restoration is done properly, but has no effect on the building-code violations.
A note on the sources
Three cautions are worth stating plainly. GrIG writes that the Tribunale del Riesame confirmed the seizure, but gives no date or detail, and we found no Sardinian daily reporting it, so it is repeated here as GrIG's account rather than as established fact. The December TAR date is given as 2 December by Sardiniapost and 15 December by GrIG, and neither has corrected, which is why this piece says only December. And L'Unione Sarda's English edition carries an automatically translated headline stating that the seizure is illegitimate, when the Italian body text says the prosecutors question the legitimacy of the ZES permit. Those are different claims, and the Italian is the one to follow.
Sources: L'Unione Sarda, 16 October 2026 · GrIG, 17 October 2026 · L'Unione Sarda, 11 August 2026 · Sardiniapost, 11 August 2026 · L'Unione Sarda English edition, 5 August 2026 · Sardiniapost, 30 July 2026 · Il Sole 24 Ore
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Elsewhere on Sardinia Blog: Gallura's 35% share of every night spent on the island; the 319,000 Sardinian homes with no permanent resident; and how full the coast actually was in summer 2026.
Sardinia Blog is published within the Rental12 ecosystem, an owner-operator letting homes it owns in Olbia and Golfo Aranci rather than a property manager acting for other owners. Its own argument about volume against value in Sardinian tourism and its press archive are company statements, not independent evidence.