In God's Name

by David Yallop

  Later Sindona would claim there was another reason for his trip. He will insist to anyone who cares to listen to him today, that it was to overthrow the Italian Government in Sicily and declare the island an independent State. According to Sindona, he would then offer Sicily to the USA as the fifty-first State of the Union in exchange for all criminal charges he faced in the USA being dropped. Sindona asserts that the plan would have succeeded except for the fact that, after the Mafia had arranged a phoney kidnap, they proceeded to carry out a real one. Fantasies and delusions such as this are laughable until one remembers that good honest men like Giorgio Ambrosoli did not die laughing.

  The madness of Michele Sindona is perhaps nowhere more clearly revealed than in the fine detail of this plan. Sindona asserts that the Gambino family was fully prepared to give up its heroin factories in Sicily, a murderous industry that was bringing in profits to the Gambino, Inzerillo and Spatola families estimated by the Italian authorities at 600 million dollars minimum a year. In exchange for this public-spirited action, the Gambino family would be given control of the trade in oranges and Rosario Spatola would be allowed to build a casino in Palermo.

  Sindona duly vanished from the streets of New York during the afternoon of August 2nd, 1979. He was clearly going to be extremely busy if Sicily was to be annexed and a deal with the President of the United States was to be effected before the trial, which was scheduled to begin on September 10th. Carrying a false passport in the name of Joseph Bonamico (Italian for good friend) and accompanied by Anthony Caruso, Sindona, wearing glasses, a white wig and false moustache and beard, boarded TWA flight 740 to Vienna at Kennedy Airport. The farce, complete with ransom demands to a variety of people from ‘kidnappers’ calling themselves the ‘Proletarian Committee for the Eversion [sic] of an Improved Justice’ continued until October 16th when an ‘emotionally exhausted and physically weak’ Sindona with a healing bullet wound in the thigh, telephoned one of his New York lawyers from a phone booth on the corner of 42nd Street and Tenth Avenue in Manhattan.

  By any standards his trip had been less than an overwhelming success. Sicily had not become part of the Union. Many of Sindona’s former friends remained just that, former friends. The list of 500, despite all threats, had not been revealed and Sindona would in the near future face additional charges of perjury, bail-jumping and arranging a false kidnap. The main gain for Sindona appears to have been 30 billion lire. This sum was paid by Roberto Calvi after the kindly Licio Gelli had interceded yet again on Sindona’s behalf. It was paid to Sindona’s ‘kidnappers’ from a Calvi-owned bank, the Banca del Gottardo, in Switzerland. In theory the sum was paid to Mafioso Rosano Spatola, for the ‘release’ of Sindona – an Italian version of the three-card trick.

  The main conspirators, apart from Sindona himself, were Anthony Caruso, Joseph Macaluso, Johnny Gambino, Rosano Spatola, Vincenzo Spatola and Joseph Miceli Crimi. The Italian authorities established that Rosario Spatola, who could normally be found wandering about the lines of cement mixers at the large construction company he owned in Palermo, had been in New York at precisely the time that Sindona had vanished. Asked the reason for his visit he replied, ‘Family business’.

  Sindona’s trial on the massive array of charges arising from the collapse of the Franklin Bank finally began in early February 1980. Immediately before it started the Vatican gave clear indication that the Roman Catholic Church at least was going to stand by its former financial adviser.

  Cardinal Giuseppe Caprio, Cardinal Sergio Guerri and Bishop Paul Marcinkus had agreed to a defence counsel request that they help Sindona’s case by swearing depositions on video-tape. Intrigued by what these devout men might say about Sindona, the prosecution had raised no objection to this unusual gambit. It is normal for witnesses to have their statements tested on oath, in courtroom, in front of judge and jury. For the men from the Vatican, trial judge Thomas Griesa waived this consideration and instructed Sindona’s lawyers to fly to Rome on Friday February 1st. The understanding was that the deposition would be taken the following day and the lawyers would report back to the Judge on the Monday. Their report, contained within the trial transcripts of United States of America v. Michele Sindona, makes extraordinary reading.

  At the last minute, or more exactly four hours before the depositions were to be sworn, Secretary of State Cardinal Casaroli intervened. There would be no depositions. ‘They would create a disruptive precedent. There has been so much unfortunate publicity about these depositions. We are very unhappy about the fact that the American Government does not give diplomatic recognition to the Vatican.’

  The sophisticated New York lawyers were still in a state of disbelief when they reported to Judge Griesa. At 11.00 a.m. on the Saturday morning, Cardinal Guerri’s secretary, Monsignor Blanchard, had telephoned the American Embassy to confirm that the cardinals and Marcinkus would be there at 4 p.m. A few minutes later he had called back to say Casaroli had withdrawn them from the arena. He was asked about his earlier call. The Monsignor promptly denied making any earlier call. He compounded that lie with another when he told the Embassy the ‘American judge knows all about this’.

  The bemused Embassy official, unaccustomed to such a graphic display of Vatican dishonesty, set about contacting Cardinal Guerri direct. When she eventually located His Eminence, he confessed that he did not know if he was coming to swear a deposition or not. In the event he did not. Guerri, Caprio and Marcinkus all assured the American lawyers that their depositions would have been full of praise for Michele Sindona – that was not their difficulty. The problem had arisen when Cardinal Casaroli saw the appalling implications. If the jury found Sindona guilty, then three high prelates of the Roman Catholic Church would in effect be branded as liars. Further, to allow the three to testify, even through voluntary depositions, would open a Vatican gate through which would come pouring every Italian magistrate demanding the same co-operation. That would lead to a breach of the Lateran Treaty which granted a cardinal complete immunity from arrest in Italy. The next step would be a very unwelcome light shining on Vatican Incorporated.

  Casaroli had shrewdly saved the Vatican at the eleventh hour. What the American lawyers did not know was that in doing so he had actually overridden a decision taken by the Pope. John Paul II had happily agreed to the request that Marcinkus and the others should tell the world how highly they regarded Michele Sindona.

  On March 27th, 1980, Michele Sindona was found guilty on 65 counts, including fraud, conspiracy, perjury, false bank statements, and misappropriation of bank funds. He was imprisoned in the Metropolitan Correctional Center, Manhattan, to await sentence.

  On May 13th, two days before he was due to be sentenced, Sindona attempted to commit suicide. He slashed his wrists superficially, but more significantly consumed a quantity of digitalis. Acting on Grand Master Gelli’s advice, Sindona had carried with him everywhere for many years, a lethal dose of digitalis. Gelli had advised not only Sindona, but other top P2 members always to carry the drug. It was P2’s insurance against members being forced to reveal details of the organization.

  How such a quantity of the drug had been brought into the prison remains a mystery. Sindona has apparently claimed to have it sewn into the lining of a suit for years. To smuggle digitalis into his prison would have been a far more difficult feat than to get it into the Papal Apartments in September 1978.

  Initially it appeared that Sindona would die, particularly as the doctors were at a loss to know what drug he had taken, but the dose was inadequate. Having eventually established that it was digitalis, they were able to administer an antidote. Sindona made a full recovery and on June 13th, 1980 was sentenced to 25 years’ imprisonment and fined over 200,000 dollars. Carlo Bordoni, who had been the main prosecution witness against Sindona, received a seven-year prison sentence and a 20,000 dollar fine. Sindona was subsequently found guilty of arranging his own false kidnap and sentenced to a further two-and-a-half years. Also found guilty of conspiring with him
and assisting him in bail-jumping were Anthony Caruso and Joseph Macaluso. Both were sentenced to five years’ imprisonment.

  While these events were unfolding in New York, Sindona’s P2 comrades Calvi and Gelli were continuing business as usual on the other side of the Atlantic. By 1979, Roberto Calvi was seeking protection in all directions: a private army of eight bodyguards; twenty-four-hour guards for Calvi, his family, his Milan, Rome and Drezzo homes; armour-plated Alfa Romeos with bullet-proof tyres. These manifestations of the master thief’s personal fears were costing the shareholders of Ambrosiano over one million dollars a year. No one in Italy, including the President or the Prime Minister, was as well protected. He sought protection from political parties of every shade or colour – the Christian Democrats, the Socialists, the Communists, all were illegally bank-rolled by Calvi. He had the protection of Gelli’s P2 and his Mafia associates, but both of these were two-edged swords which could be used against him.

  The illegally purchased shares in Banco Ambrosiano were concealed in Panamanian companies beyond the jurisdiction of the Bank of Italy, but always the fear for Calvi was the possibility that officialdom would discover this aspect of his many criminal activities. First the Nassau branch had been used to bury the illegal transactions. When the Bank of Italy came within an ace of proving what they suspected, Calvi moved the axis of the fraud to Nicaragua. Then in 1979 he moved much of the central activity that governed the fraud even further away, to Peru. On October 11th, 1979 Banco Ambrosiano Andino opened its doors in Lima. Shortly afterwards the majority of the loans that had been extended to the shell Panamanian and Liechtenstein companies were transferred to Peru. These small shell companies, many with a nominal capital of a mere 10,000 dollars, continued to proliferate. Eventually there would be seventeen. The majority were owned by a Luxembourg company aptly named Manic SA which in turn was owned by the Vatican Bank.

  If the international banks queueing up over the years to lend Calvi millions upon millions of dollars had carried out even elementary homework, Calvi would have been exposed years before he suffered his ultimate fate. It is true that the Bank of Italy 1978 report on Banco Ambrosiano was highly confidential and not freely available. That was still the position when I obtained it in 1981. If one author can obtain such a report, so presumably can the Midland, Lloyds, National Westminster or any of the other 250 banks scattered throughout the world who were taken in by Calvi, who had stolen our money. These bankers have a much-vaunted reputation for shrewdness and astuteness, yet they believed the doctored accounts Calvi showed them. The statements he made assuring them that the vast loans were to finance Italian exports were accepted. Did no one check? Did no one subsequently monitor? That over 450 million dollars should be loaned by the international banks, not to another bank, but to a mere holding company called Banco Ambrosiano Holdings, based in Luxembourg – a company manifestly unsupported by any central bank – is a savage condemnation of the lending practices of the interbank market. The men who sit on the boards of these lending banks should be made to answer to their shareholders and to all who have accounts with them. It is not pleasant to reflect that some of us in Great Britain undoubtedly financed the purchase of Exocet missiles for Argentina, missiles that were used to kill so many men during the Falklands war. Yet there is no doubt that this evil chain did occur. Calvi diverted millions of dollars to Licio Gelli, who in turn used some of that money to purchase Exocets for Argentina. Investing in the future is fine, but investing to ensure that your own kith and kin have no future is another matter. Doubtless the men who negotiated these huge loans to Calvi would claim that at the time it looked like very good business.

  Just how obscene this particular transaction was can only be appreciated when one is aware that this money was diverted to Gelli and Ortolani through a Panamanian company owned by the Vatican.

  The company in question, Bellatrix, was controlled by Marcinkus at the Vatican Bank but created by a trinity of P2 members, Gelli, Ortolani and Bruno Tassan Din, managing director and financial strategist to the giant Rizzoli publishing group. These Masons milked the Ambrosiano cow of 184 million dollars. The capital of Bellatrix? Ten thousand dollars. The vast non-returnable loan was secured on paper against a large helping of Rizzoli shares. Rizzoli was jointly owned by P2 and the Vatican. The value placed on the Rizzoli shares far exceeded their real worth.

  Astolfine, yet another of the Panamanian companies owned by the Vatican was able, on a capital of 10,000 dollars, to run up debts of 486 million dollars. Its security? A large helping of grossly over-valued Banco Ambrosiano shares.

  With business practices of this order capitalism need have no fear that it will be ultimately destroyed by Marxism. All Marxists have to do is to sit back and wait for capitalism to self-destruct automatically.

  It is understandable that ENI, one of the biggest conglomerates in the world, should suddenly start lending Calvi money; that this huge state-owned oil company should suddenly start functioning as a bank and lend to instead of borrow from Banco Ambrosiano Holdings in Luxembourg – the Chairman of ENI, Giorgio Mazzanti, and the head of its financial department, Leonardo di Donna, are both members of P2. To date no P2 members have been discovered in the higher reaches of the many international banks which continuously poured millions of dollars down Calvi’s throat between 1978 and 1980.

  When the man in the street in London, Paris, New York, Copenhagen, Tokyo, Ottawa, Sydney and Wellington curses the high rate of his bank charges he should tilt his hat at the ghost of Roberto Calvi and at the ever elusive Licio Gelli and Umberto Ortolani. He should also spare a thought for Vatican City. When we pay our high bank charges we are helping to pick up their tab.

  Incontrovertible evidence that the Vatican owns these mysterious Panamanian companies reaches back to 1971, to the time when Calvi and Sindona put Bishop Paul Marcinkus on the board of Calvi’s section in Nassau.

  In Milan, during 1979, the magistrate Luca Mucci spasmodically questioned Calvi. Calvi would study his shoes or the floor intently, mutter about his need to preserve banking secrecy, discuss Inter Milan’s chances of winning their next football match and leave an outmanoeuvred judge.

  By the end of 1979 the financial exposure of the Vatican-owned front companies that Calvi controlled was in excess of 500 million dollars. Fortunately the intercosmic banking fantasies of Sindona had not yet become a reality. There were still financial situations Calvi could not control. The dollar began to rise against the lira. Ambrosiano’s assets, such as they were, consisted very largely of lira-denominated shares. The game became frenetic. Just to keep up with the fraud required demented juggling, particularly when the running costs included 30 billion lire for buying the Venice newspaper Il Gazzettino to keep the Christian Democrats happy, and ‘lending’ the Rome daily Paese Sera 20 billion lire to keep the Communists content. Everyone had their hands out and it always seemed that the man with the biggest hands was Licio Gelli.

  In January 1980 Banco Ambrosiano de America del Sud opened its doors in Buenos Aires. There was practically no banking activity but it was this arm of the Calvi empire which helped finance Argentinian purchases of Exocet missiles. It also provided funds for arms purchases by other South American regimes.

  In July 1980 Judge Luca Mucci felt sufficiently impressed by the investigation that the Guardia di Finanza, the financial police, had carried out in the wake of the Bank of Italy 1978 enquiry, to order Calvi to surrender his passport and to warn the banker that he would be facing criminal charges. It was a small step forward in the name of justice.

  It took a smart step backwards when a few months later Calvi obtained his passport back again through the good offices of Gelli. The Grand Master was less inclined to intercede when Massimo Spada, late of the Vatican Bank and currently Chairman of Banca Cattolica del Veneto, was arrested and charged with involvement of a criminal nature in Il Crack Sindona. Next to feel the handcuffs, at least momentarily, was Luigi Mennini, still active in the Vatican Bank, on similar charg
es.

  As the net began to draw tighter around Calvi, despite the valiant efforts of Gelli to corrupt all and sundry, the Milanese banker’s hopes of continuing to plunder relied very largely on Marcinkus. The game was becoming much rougher and without the constant co-operation of the Vatican Bank, concealment of Calvi’s crimes would cease. It had always been so but in the past the pressure on the Vatican had been minimal; now with the arrest of Mennini the pressure intensified. Calvi began to fear that, despite the massive amounts of money he had channelled into the hands of Bishop Paul Marcinkus, the time might be fast approaching when the man across the Tiber might withdraw his active support and leave Calvi alone and highly vulnerable.

  Early in 1981 Treasury Minister Beniamino Andreatta, who had been promoted to the post the previous October, concluded that the Vatican should withdraw its support immediately. He had studied the 1978 Bank of Italy report at length and felt compelled to make an attempt to protect the Church. He went to the Vatican and spoke at length to Foreign Minister Cardinal Casaroli. He outlined the entire situation. He urged the Vatican to break all links with Banco Ambrosiano before it was too late. The advice was ignored. Marcinkus would claim later that he had no knowledge of this meeting. In any event, if the devout Catholic Andreatta had been aware of the full facts, he would have known that it was an impossibility for the Vatican to sever the links. It actually owned Banco Ambrosiano. Through the array of Panamanian and Liechtenstein companies, it had acquired control of over 16 per cent of Banco Ambrosiano. With the rest of the shares in the bank so widely scattered among small shareholders, that gave the Vatican a controlling interest.

  At noon on March 2nd 1981 the Vatican Press Office released a document that puzzled many. Issued without explanation, it reminded all Catholics of the Canon Laws covering Freemasons and stressed the fact that the present code ‘forbids Catholics under pain of excommunication from joining Masonic or similar associations’. No one could understand the timing. Roman Catholics had been subjected to automatic excommunication if they became Freemasons since 1738. Why remind them in early March 1981? The answer was not long in coming and indicates that the intelligence-gathering network of the Church is at least as efficient as Licio Gelli’s. The Vatican statement did not explain how all the good Catholics who featured on the membership list of P2 could have their names expunged from the records before the Italian authorities discovered them. For P2 member Calvi, this apparently insurmountable problem was to have disastrous consequences.