God's Banker (2 page)
Authors: Rupert Cornwell
Some of The Cast
Andreatta, Beniamino
:
Born 1928. Professor of Economy at Bologna
University. Since 1976 a senator for the Christian Democrat party.
Named Budget Minister August 1979. Between October 1980 and
November 1982 Minister of the Treasury. He ordered the liquidation
of Banco Ambrosiano.
Andreotti, Giulio:
Born 1919. A Christian Democrat member of
Parliament since Italy became a Republic. Many times Minister,
including five terms as Prime Minister, in 1972 and 1973, and from
July 1976 to August 1979. One of Italy's most experienced politicians,
and famous for the aphorism
Il potere logora chi non ce I'ha
—"Power
wears out those who don't have it."
Baffi, Paolo:
Born 1911. Entered Bank of Italy in 1936. Head of
Research department, then general manager, and Governor between
1975 and September 1979. He ordered the inspection of Banco
Ambrosiano in 1978.
Bagnasco, Orazio:
Born 1927. Financier active in property-based
mutual funds. Since 1980 owner of the CIGA chain of luxury hotels.
Deputy chairman of Banco Ambrosiano from January 1982 until the
end.
Bazoli, Giovanni:
Born 1932. Deputy chairman of Banca San Paolo
di Brescia. In August 1982 named the first chairman of Nuovo Banco
Ambrosiano, which took over the Italian parts of the old Banco
Ambrosiano group.
Bonomi, Carlo:
Born 1940. Financier, chairman of Invest Spa, the
family holding company. The Bonomi group, then headed by Anna
Bonomi Bolchini, mother of Carlo, was between 1973 and 1975
associated with some of the dealings of Roberto Calvi.
Botta, Giacomo:
Senior official in the foreign department of Banco
Ambrosiano. Until 1981 director of Banco Ambrosiano Andino in
Lima. Since 1981 in charge of foreign business at head office in Milan.
Calvi, Roberto:
Born 1920, died 1982, after career of some 35 years at
Banco Ambrosiano. Named general manager in 1971, deputy chairman and managing director from 1974, and chairman from November
1975 until his death. Chairman of La Centrale since 1976. Chairman
of Banco Ambrosiano Holding Luxembourg and of Banco Ambrosiano Overseas, Nassau. He was a member of the P-2 freemasons'
lodge from 1975 or 1976, or perhaps earlier.
Canesi, Carlo:
Died 1981. Chairman of Banco Ambrosiano from
1965 until 1971. He took on Calvi at the bank, and helped shape his
early career.
Carboni, Flavio:
Sardinian property contractor, with a wide variety
of contacts. Met Calvi in August 1981
.
Influential on Calvi during the
last ten months of his life, and organized the flight to London in June
1982.
Carli, Guido:
Born 1914. Governor of the Bank of Italy 1960 to 1975.
He was instrumental in the downfall of Sindona. Chairman of Con-
findustria, Italian employers association between 1976 and 1980.
Ciampi, Carlo:
Born 1920. Spent career entirely within Bank of Italy.
Deputy general manager 1976, general manager 1978. Appointed
Governor of the Bank of Italy in September 1979. His intensifying
pressure led to the exposure of Calvi's fraud in 1982.
Craxi, Bettino:
Born 1934. Since 1968 member of parliament representing Italian Socialist Party. Since 1976, leader of the party.
Cuccia, Enrico:
Managing director of Mediobanca in Milan from
1946 until his retirement in 1982. A determined enemy of both
Sindona and Calvi.
De Benedetti, Carlo:
Born 1934. Since 1978 deputy chairman and
chief executive of Olivetti. Between November 1981 and January
1982 deputy chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, and a fierce critic of the
methods of Roberto Calvi during his brief stay at the bank.
Di Donna, Leonardo:
Born 1932. Between 1976 and 1982 a director
of ENI, the Italian state-owned energy group. Together with Florio
Fiorini, for part of the period finance director of ENI, he arranged
substantial loans for the foreign subsidiaries of Banco Ambrosiano
between 1978 and 1981. Listed as a member of the P-2 freemasons'
lodge.
Gelli, Lido:
Born 1919. Grandmaster of the P-2 freemasons' lodge
until its discovery and dissolution in 1981. A powerful influence on
Calvi in the later stages of his career. Arrested in Geneva, September
1982.
La Malfa, Ugo:
Died 1979. A founder of the modern Italian republic
and leader of the Italian Republican party until his death. Many times
Minister, Treasury Minister in 1973 and 1974, and a fierce opponent
of both Sindona and Calvi.
Leemans, Michel:
Born 1938. A Belgian, with wide international
financial experience. Since 1974 at La Centrale, the holding company
for the Italian interests of the Ambrosiano group, and until August
1982 its managing director. He conducted the final talks with the
IOR, the Vatican bank, to try and save Ambrosiano in June 1982.
Leoni, Filippo:
Born 1940. In charge of foreign division of Banco
Ambrosiano for much of the period before the bank's collapse in
1982. Between 1979 and 1981 chairman of Banco Andino. A director
of Banco Ambrosiano Holding of Luxembourg, and from 1981 joint
general manager of Banco Ambrosiano, Milan.
Marcinkus, Paul:
Born 1922 at Chicago, Illinois. Left to study canon
law in Rome, 1950. Chairman of the Istituto per le Opere di
Religione (IOR), the Vatican bank, since 1971. Pro-President, or
"mayor", of the Vatican City State since 1981.
Mennini, Luigi:
Born 1911. Managing director of the IOR. His son,
Alessandro, was an executive in the foreign department of Banco
Ambrosiano.
Milan Magistrates:
Giuliano Turone, Gherardo Colombo, Luca Muc-
ci, Gerardo d'Ambrosio, Pierluigi dell'Osso and others. They conducted the frequently overlapping investigations of the bankruptcies
of first Michele Sindona and then Calvi.
Ortolani, Umberto:
Perhaps Gelli's closest associate in the P-2.
Instrumental in bringing the Rizzoli publishing group within the orbit
of the secret lodge. Proprietor of Banco Financeiro Sudamericano
(Bafisud) in Uruguay, in which Ambrosiano Overseas of Nassau held
an interest.
Pazienza, Francesco:
Born 1946. Business consultant, with links to
Italy's former secret services, certain politicians, and figures in US
public life. Closely involved with Calvi from 1981. He tried to form
the consortium which would rescue Banco Ambrosiano.
Pesenti, Carlo:
Born 1907. Financier of long-standing Catholic connections. He also had a close business relationship with the Ambrosiano group. In March 1982 he became Banco Ambrosiano's largest
declared shareholder, and was appointed a director.
Rizzoli, Angelo:
Born 1943. Since 1978 chairman of Rizzoli publishing group, which bought the
Corriere della Sera
newspaper in
1974. From 1975 his companies were heavily reliant on loans from
Banco Ambrosiano
.
He was named as a member of the P-2 in 1981.
Rosone, Roberto:
Born 1928. Spent his entire career at Banco
Ambrosiano, mostly on the domestic side. From 1981, general
manager and deputy chairman. He proposed placing the bank in the
hands of the Bank of Italy in June 1982.
Rossi, Guido:
Born 1931. Named as chairman of the Consob, the
Milan stock market regulatory authority in 1981. He forced Banco
Ambrosiano to be quoted on the main market. Resigned from the
Consob in August 1982.
Sarcinelli, Mario:
Born 1934. Entered Bank of Italy in 1957. In 1976
he was appointed a deputy general manager, in which capacity he
superintended the inspection of Banco Ambrosiano in 1978. Briefly
imprisoned during the "Bank of Italy affair" in 1979. All charges
against him were dismissed and he was reinstated in 1980. Since 1982
director general of the Italian Treasury Ministry.
Siegenthaler, Pierre:
A Swiss citizen, he was president of Banco
Ambrosiano Overseas of Nassau from its inception in 1971, and as
such closely involved with the foreign operations of Calvi.
Sindona, Michele:
Born 1920. A financier, and an early mentor of
Calvi, then partner with him in many deals. Declared bankrupt in
1974 and convicted of fraud and perjury in 1980 by a Manhattan
Court. Currently in jail in the US. His name appeared in the
membership lists of the P-2.
Tassan Din, Bruno:
Born 1942. Entered the Rizzoli group in the early
1970s, to become general manager and then managing director. The
financial strategist of Rizzoli, he negotiated with Calvi the sale of 40
per cent of Rizzoli to La Centrale in 1981. His name featured on the
lists of P-2 members found in March 1981.
Introduction
War, sport and
scandal. Italy's general public hardly knew which
way to turn in the summer of 1982. Down on the edge of the world in
the South Atlantic, Britain was recapturing the Falklands capital of
Port Stanley, to put an end to a conflict which had divided and
discomforted Italy. The country had been torn between a natural
sense of obligation to support an old European friend whose
sovereign rights were being challenged, and its instinctive sympathies
for Argentina, nearly half of whose population is of Italian extraction. Much closer to home, in Vigo in North-Western Spain, the
national football team was unimpressively beginning its own campaign, that would culminate in world cup victory just four weeks
later.
But something else was stealing up on Italy, which in the months
ahead would overshadow memories of the battlefields of the South
Atlantic and the playing fields of Spain.
On the evening of Saturday June 12, the main television news
bulletins gave prominence to a most curious occurrence: two days
earlier Roberto Calvi, chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's most
important privately owned bank, had disappeared without word from
his flat in central Rome. In most instances the temporary absence of a
leading financier or industrialist, even if unexplained, would hardly
be a matter of immense public concern. Roberto Calvi was, however,
no ordinary financier, nor his bank an ordinary bank. For several
years, and despite an outward appearance of soundness, Banco
Ambrosiano and its chairman had been the object of suspicion and
dark rumours.
Since the previous summer he had been without a passport after
conviction and sentence to a four-year prison term for serious
breaches of currency law.
Calvi only
remained at liberty pending an
oft-postponed appeal, but due at last to be heard on June 21.
Magistrates in Rome and his home city of Milan were investigating
others of his turbid financial involvements.
Calvi had emerged as a member of the sinister P-2 freemasons'
lodge, discovered in 1981 and swiftly outlawed as a threat to the
security of the State. Nor was that all. By the time of Calvi's
disappearance, many in authority in Rome, and in the know in Milan,
were well aware that the court cases, the P-2 and the gossip were but
symptoms of a deeper illness at Ambrosiano.
Small wonder that the Italian government was watching the affair
intently, and that on that June Saturday Giovanni Spadolini, the
Prime Minister, observed publicly that the vanishing act was "an
extremely serious event". Just how serious, however, not even he can
have imagined.
Within a week of those words, Calvi was dead; and perhaps the
most disastrous bank collapse anywhere since the Second World War
had been set in motion. In the absence of the newspapers, halted for a
strike, it was left to the radio to make known the scarcely credible;
Calvi, carrying a falsified passport, his pockets stuffed with foreign
banknotes and weighed down with stones, had been found hanging
under a bridge, far away in London.
While British police and Italian magistrates were .trying to piece
together the truth of the last days and hours of Calvi's existence, other
facts were coming to light at home, stretching the limits of credulity
further. Far from being basically solid, Ambrosiano had buckled
beneath the weight of $1,300 million of loans, extended by subsidiary
banks in Latin America, and which now could not be recovered. The
recipients of such largesse
were
a handful of Panamanian and Liechtenstein shell companies.
And
who owned them? The answer was
none other than the Vatican itself.
As
the unusually hot summer
of
1982
wore
on, the investigators
tried to establish precisely
how
the money had been lost.
In
the
process they began to uncover the
history
of a decade
of inglorious
partnership between Calvi's Ambrosiano
and
the Istituto
per le
Opere
di
Religione (IOR), literally "the Institute for Religious
Works", but more prosaically, the Vatican bank. Half, maybe more,
of the missing money had been used to buy shares in Ambrosiano and
other companies controlled by Calvi. The destination of the rest
constituted perhaps the greatest financial mystery of the early 1980s.
Some, it has been suggested, was channelled to Italian political
parties, some went to finance the nefarious activities of the P-2, and
much, in the closing stages, to buy help from any quarter to stave off
gathering calamity. There is some evidence that towards the end
Ambrosiano may have been linked with international arms trading;
other rumours were that the bank's complex network
could
have
served as a channel for financing Solidarity, the independent Polish
trade union, close to the heart of a Polish Pope, and which was outlawed in December 1981.
What is clear is that for the last year of his life and more, Calvi,
reputed to be one of Italy's most powerful men, was no longer master
of his destiny. The predator had become a prey, fit only to be
exploited, blackmailed, threatened and finally abandoned.
On June 7 his last redoubt fell, when the Ambrosiano board,
previously accommodating of his every whim, voted him down for the
first and only time. Then flight, death in London, and the discovery
that only the Vatican, if it agreed to repay some at least of the money
lent to companies that it had sponsored, could prevent complete ruin.
But the Vatican refused, and on August 6 the old Ambrosiano, once
known as the "priests' bank", was no more, ordered into compulsory
liquidation by the Italian Government. A year later, the echo of the
scandal was still reverberating both inside and outside Italy.
By the extravagant standards of the international banking crisis of the
summer of 1982, the Ambrosiano affair was modest. A good part of
the missing money was made good by the Bank of Italy, and creditors
would recover some at least of the rest. In any case $1,300 million was
of small account when measured against the $84,000 million on which
the sovereign state of Mexico all but defaulted that August, and the
huge debt repayment difficulties faced by countries like Poland,
Brazil and Argentina. If the world's banking system found itself
under unprecedented strain at that time, Banco Ambrosiano was
only one of the smaller reasons.
But the fascinations of the story of Roberto Calvi are enormous.
They lie in the length and method of his swindle, its geographical
extent, and its backcloth of the enduring division between "lay" and
Catholic in Italian society. Then there is the cast of characters which
peoples it. They range from a golfing archbishop in the Vatican to a
jailed Sicilian financier, from eminent central bank governors to
small-time hustlers and big-time criminals, from a dynasty of publishers to the venerable grandmaster of a secret freemasons' lodge.
If Italy is notoriously riddled with scandals, the Ambrosiano affair
presents no few novelties. Above all, perhaps, the pattern was
different. Italian scandals usually start with sensational disclosures,
more often than not carefully orchestrated to further a cause in a
given political or financial feud. Generally they move from the
complicated to the virtually incomprehensible, and the outside
world, and most Italians, give up even trying to understand. Banco
Ambrosiano and Roberto Calvi are the reverse
.
Their scandal started
with innuendo and rumour, persisting for a long period. Then the
explosion, leading not to obscurity but greater clarity, allowing many
apparently unrelated events of the past to be understood as part of a
single plot.
In other respects, however, the disaster of Roberto Calvi is only
too familiar. Ambrosiano is but the last of a series of banking scandals
which have peppered the 123 years since the modern Italian state was
founded. Back in 1922 a prominent newspaper began an editorial
with the words that "Italy is a fertile breeding ground for bankruptcies and banking scandals".
That observation was in the immediate wake of the Banca di
Sconto (literally "Discount Bank") affair, a contorted tale of how
Government credits, originally intended for financing wartime production, were used for speculation and ill-judged expansion both in
Italy and abroad. Some thirty years before that, Italy's political
establishment had been agitated and discredited by an earlier crop of
bank failures—most notably that of the Banca Romana.
One of six regional issuing banks then authorized in the country,
the Banca Romana lavishly financed not only the construction boom
which accompanied the choice of Rome as Italy's permanent capital,
but politicians and their parties as well. The misbehaviour extended
to the printing of false banknotes, and led to the trial of Bernardo
Tanlongo, the Banca Romana's Governor. The scandal even contributed to the resignation of the Government headed by Giovanni
Giolitti, the dominant Liberal politician of his time. But an inquiry
afterwards cleared him of any suggestion of personal enrichment; as
with most politicians brushed by later bank scandals, including
Ambrosiano, Giolitti lived to fight another day.
Recent decades have witnessed no let-up in the pace
.
The sequence
has varied relatively
little;
the unscrupulous financier who helps
meet the need for funds of the political parties, in exchange for
protection, which at
a
certain point can be extended no longer. The
most striking recent example, at least until Calvi's own contribution
to Western financial history, was Michele Sindona, a Sicilian tax
lawyer who in the 1960s and early 1970s constructed from Milan an
empire which spanned the Atlantic. He had the unusual distinction of
seeing his Italian and American banks go under virtually simultaneously. Sindona,
as
we shall discover, plays no small part
in
the
history of Calvi, first
as teacher,
then partner,
and
finally as avenging
tormentor.