In God's Name (55 page)

Sindona remains a man very much in demand. There is the three-and-a-half-year prison sentence already passed on him in Italy. There is the continuing American investigation into the helicopter attempt in January 1981 to rescue him from his United States prison. There is the July 1981 Italian Government indictment charging him with having ordered the murder of Giorgio Ambrosoli. Also named in that arrest warrant are his son Nino Sindona and his son-in-law Pier Sandro Magnoni. There is the January 1982 indictment from Palermo, Sicily in which he and 65 members of the Gambino, Inzerillo and Spatola Mafia families were charged with operating a 600 million dollar per year heroin trade between Sicily and the United States. There are the further Sicilian indictments which charge Sindona with illegal
possession of arms, fraud, using a false passport and violating currency regulations. Then there are the further indictments issued by the Italian government in July 1982 charging Sindona and others, including the Vatican’s Massimo Spada and Luigi Mennini, with a long list of criminal offences connected with the fraudulent bankruptcy of Banca Privata Italiana. It is only fitting that the prosecution’s case with regard to these last alleged offences be based, very largely, on the valiant work of the murdered Giorgio Ambrosoli. No words of mine could describe so exactly what manner of man Sindona is and what manner of family he has spawned, as those uttered by his son Nino Sindona. He was talking on tape with the writer Luigi di Fonzo. (The tape is now with the New York prosecutor’s office.) The long interview took place during the evening of March 18th and the early hours of March 19th, 1983.

My father admitted to me that it was Arico . . . who committed the murder.
*
They were threatening Ambrosoli and it was effective for a while. Billy Arico was sent to Milan by Venetucci [a heroin smuggler and alleged member of the Gambino family] at my father’s request, and was supposed to shoot at Ambrosoli, but not kill him. Arico committed the murder . . . Ambrosoli’s family do not deserve any pity. I have no compassion for the fucking guy and this is not enough for a son of a bitch like him. I’m sorry he died without suffering. Let’s make sure on this point. I’m never going to condemn my father because Ambrosoli doesn’t deserve to be on this earth . . . My father has gone through enough. Now it’s time our enemies go through something. Griesa, Kenney, it’s their turn to suffer. Not my father again, not us. We have done nothing . . . To obtain justice there could be no crime that I would be afraid of committing. People like Kenney, Griesa, they could die of the worst pain, and for me it would be only a case for a big champagne celebration. I believe in justifiable homicide.

Thomas Griesa was the trial judge in the United States
v
. Sindona. John Kenney was the chief prosecutor. Luigi di Fonzo asked Nino Sindona how he could justify murder.

I could justify it in about a second and a half. Like I could justify political murder in a second and a half. Let’s assume I want to kill Judge Griesa. For me it’s self defence . . . because he committed the enormous crime of putting my father in jail for life. And there is no chance of a re-trial as long as Judge Griesa is alive. So by killing him we will obtain a chance for a re-trial. So self defence.

Clearly for people like Michele Sindona and his son to murder a Pope who stood in their way would be ‘self defence’.

Roberto Calvi. It was once said by Lenin: ‘Give a capitalist enough rope and he will hang himself.’ Clearly the first coroner’s jury that considered the death of Calvi agreed with Lenin. It returned a verdict of suicide. The fact that the hearing was compressed into a day, that witnesses were missing, that witnesses committed sustained perjury, and very little of the highly relevant background evidence was presented did not appear to disturb the Coroner. In Italy the verdict was greeted with incredulity. In 1983 a second Coroner’s jury got nearer the truth when it returned an open verdict on the man who had been found hanging appropriately next to a sewer outlet.

I am in no doubt that Calvi was ‘suicided’ by his P2 friends – yet another example of the very high risks that are attendant if one pursues a career in Italian banking. Hours before Calvi died, his secretary in Milan, Graziella Corrocher, was ‘suicided’ from a fourth floor window at the Banco Ambrosiano headquarters in Milan. Her ‘death note’, which showered curses on Roberto Calvi, was discovered by Roberto Rosone, still walking with the aid of sticks after the attempt on his life. A few months later on October 2nd, 1982, Giuseppe Dellacha, an executive at the bank, was also ‘suicided’ from a window in the Milan headquarters. Calvi’s widow, Clara, is on record as laying the blame for her husband’s death at the bronze doors of the Vatican: ‘The Vatican had my husband killed to hide the bankruptcy of the Vatican Bank.’

If it did, and it is not a view I share, then it would perhaps be poetic justice. The case against Roberto Calvi with regard to his direct involvement in the death of Albino Luciani is strong. Very strong.

Calvi was engaged in the progressive, continuing theft of over one billion dollars, a theft that would have been completely exposed if Luciani had lived. That exposure would have occurred in 1978. With Luciani dead, Calvi was free to continue his colossal and frightening array of crimes. Over 400 million dollars of the money that has apparently vanished in a Panamanian triangle was borrowed by Calvi from the world’s banks
after
the death of Albino Luciani.

Calvi advised everyone to read
The Godfather
because, as he used to say, ‘Then you will understand the ways of the world.’ It was certainly the way of the world he inhabited.

Until the end of his life he was laundering money for the Mafia, the role he had inherited from Michele Sindona. He was also recycling money for P2. These functions were carried out with the assistance of the Vatican Bank, with money moving from Banco Ambrosiano into a Vatican account in Italy, then on to Banco Gottardo or UBS in Switzerland. He laundered money from kidnappings, drugs sales, arms deals, bank raids, hold-ups, thefts of jewellery and works of art. His criminal contacts ranged from what is known as High Mafia to ordinary, run-of-the-mill murderers, through to right-wing terrorist organizations.

The 1.3 billion dollar hole in Banco Ambrosiano was not only created by the fraudulent purchase of shares in Calvi’s own bank. Many millions went to sustain Gelli and Ortolani. Fifty-five million dollars, for example, were diverted by Calvi from Peru to a numbered account at UBS Zürich. The owner of that account is Licio Gelli. Another 30 million dollars were diverted into Swiss accounts owned by Calvi’s close friend Flavio Carboni.

In early 1982 Calvi transferred direct from the mother bank in Milan 470 million dollars to Peru. He then gave his secretary an air ticket to Monte Carlo and a pile of Telex messages. The messages duly sent from Monte Carlo moved the money into a variety of Swiss numbered accounts.

The Italian political parties of Christian Democrats, Communists and Socialists were not the only political factions to have a bite at the golden apple. Millions were given at Gelli’s direct instructions to the military regimes which then controlled Argentina, and still control Uruguay and Paraguay. Money stolen by Calvi was used by the Argentine military junta to purchase Exocet missiles from the French; Calvi’s bank in Peru assisted in that deal. Millions went secretly and illegally to aid Solidarity in Poland. This particular transaction was a mix of money that Calvi had stolen and Vatican bank funds collected from the Catholic faithful. Calvi often talked about these transactions to trusted friends. They included Carboni who, like all good Masons, was secretly running a tape recorder:

Marcinkus must watch out for Casaroli, who is head of the group that opposes him. If Casaroli should meet one of those financiers in New York who are working for Marcinkus, sending money to
Solidarity, the Vatican would collapse. Or even if Casaroli should find just one of those pieces of paper that I know of – Goodbye Marcinkus. Goodbye Wojtyla. Goodbye Solidarity. The last operation would be enough, the one for 20 million dollars. I’ve also told Andreotti but it’s not clear which side he is on. If things in Italy go a certain way, the Vatican will have to hire a building in Washington behind the Pentagon. A far cry from St Peter’s.

The total amount that was secretly and illegally funnelled on behalf of the Vatican to Solidarity was in excess of one hundred million dollars. Many who hold the strongest sympathies with Solidarity might well applaud such action. To interfere in such a manner, however, with the affairs of another country creates a dangerous precedent. Why not a hundred million funnelled secretly to the IRA to kill and maim on the British mainland? A billion dollars to the Sandinistans to blow up a few skyscrapers in New York, Chicago and San Francisco? Playing God, even for a Pope, can be a dangerous occupation. For Karol Wojtyla publicly to upbraid Nicaraguan priests for participating in politics while he interferes in such a profound manner with the affairs of Poland is breathtaking hypocrisy.

We have no temporal goods to exchange, no economic interests to discuss. Our possibilities for intervention are specific and limited and of a special character. They do not interfere with the purely temporal, technical and political affairs, which are matters for your governments.

Thus spoke Albino Luciani to the Diplomatic Corps accredited to the Vatican. It is clear that the man who has succeeded him takes precisely the opposite point of view.

With regard to the murder of Albino Luciani, Roberto Calvi had the motive, the opportunity and undoubtedly, like Michele Sindona, the capacity.

Before Luciani’s murder, Calvi associates in P2 had demonstrated their capacity to kill with a variety of appalling bomb outrages. Their ability to kill a specific subject was demonstrated with the murder of Vittorio Occorsio. After the death of the Pope, murder and mayhem began to match the tempo of the gigantic thefts in which Calvi was indulging. The fact that Emilio Alessandrini, Mino Pecorelli, Giorgio Ambrosoli, Antonio Varisco and Boris Giuliano are all dead, is the most telling evidence of the kind of company that
Roberto Calvi kept. The fact that the Governor of the Bank of Italy and one of his most trusted colleagues could be falsely charged, that Sarcinelli was forced to endure two weeks of imprisonment, that for years men who knew the truth were frightened to act, is a demonstration of the terrifying power at the command of Calvi: power that came from many sources including Licio Gelli, Grand Master of P2.

Licio Gelli was the Puppet Master with a few thousand strings from which to select. Strings appear to have led everywhere: to the heart of the Vatican, to the White House, to Presidential palaces in a wide range of countries. It was Gelli who gave his singular advice to senior P2 members that they should always carry a fatal dose of digitalis. A lethal dose will cause, to use a lay term, a heart attack. Any subsequent examination by a doctor that is merely external, will confirm that death has been caused by a myocardial infarction. The drug is odourless and is impossible to trace unless an autopsy is performed.

Why did Licio Gelli use such a strange codename, ‘Luciani’, whenever he called his P2 paymaster on the special hotline? Was mere mention of the name enough to send the millions upon millions flowing from Calvi into Gelli’s various bank accounts?

According to the members of Calvi’s family, he attributed all his problems to ‘the priests’. He made it clear which priests he had in mind – those in the Vatican. In September 1978 one priest in particular represented to Roberto Calvi the greatest threat with which he had ever been confronted. Calvi was with Gelli and Ortolani in South America in August 1978, planning new schemes. Can anyone really believe that Gelli and Ortolani would have merely shrugged their shoulders when Calvi told them that Albino Luciani was about to take a course of action that would mean the party was over?

The murder of a magistrate or a judge or a policeman could be effected openly. The death would remain a mystery or be blamed on one of the many terrorist organizations then rampaging throughout Italy. But the murder of a Pope to cover up what was ultimately a billion dollar theft would have to be achieved by stealth. It would have to arouse as little concern as possible. For the murder to achieve its aim, the death would have to appear natural.

The cost, no matter how high, in bribes, contracts, fees or commissions, was irrelevant. If the object of the Pope’s death was to protect and sustain Roberto Calvi while he continued to steal millions, then there was a virtual well of truth to draw upon. The problem of deputy chairman Roberto Rosone, which Calvi discussed
at great length with fellow Mason Carboni, was intended to be resolved with the contract murder of Rosone. He lived, but Carboni still paid 530,000 dollars, the day after the attack, to the surviving gangster Ernesto Diotavelli. Half a million for a deputy chairman. How much for a Pope? When you have an entire bank at your disposal?

After the death of Roberto Calvi, the most pertinent obituary came from Mario Sarcinelli, one of the many who had personally experienced the powers upon which Calvi could call. ‘He began as a servant, then became a master, only to become the servant of other masters later on.’ Calvi’s ultimate master was the man I believe to be at the very heart of the conspiracy to murder Albino Luciani. Licio Gelli.

This book has already recorded many instances of the power and influence that Gelli has exerted. At the time of Albino Luciani’s death in September 1978, Licio Gelli, to all practical purposes, ran Italy. His access to any person or any place within the Vatican City State was unrivalled. The fact that he was in South America at the time of Luciani’s death is no alibi in the conventional legal sense. Sindona was enjoying an early evening dry Martini in New York at the precise moment that Giorgio Ambrosoli was murdered by William Arico in Milan. That arrangement will not save Sindona if the Italian authorities ever manage to have him extradited from the USA.