Just spoke to my friend,all true.
Actually he told me the full NJI story and here are just some facts:
the pilots' contracts are of 2 types, one is Jersey based and the other one in Luxemburg; in both cases they are illegal because they avoid the italian tax and law system which by EU law should be the governing one for workers based in Italy.
Apparently quite a few people at NJI don't even have an EU passport and some not even a JAA licence, of course it is possible to obtain an EU work permit (temporary in most cases) but it seems that most of them still don't have it after more than 1 year of operations and it's known that one should have a work permit BEFORE starting a job in the EU so they are illegal even from an immigration point of view.
Moreover the fact that they are operating on a UK AOC in Italy and employ pilots from all over makes the category very divided and vulnerable since it is hardly possible for any union to protect their interests.
He also told me that they have had problems and delays since the beginning of the summer in paying salaries and services and that punctuality,aircraft reliability and load factors have also been a problem.
It sounds to me that the reasons for disaster are to be found at management level and not in the facts that happened on sept. 11th.