by David Yallop
It is abundantly clear that in the mid-1970s Calvi and Marcinkus devised a scheme that spawned a multitude of crimes. It is equally clear that the Panamanian and other off-shore companies the Vatican owned, and still own, were run for the mutual benefit of Banco Ambrosiano and the Vatican Bank.
The Vatican has claimed since Calvi’s death that the first it knew of the off-shore companies and its ownership of them was in August 1981. This is yet another Vatican lie. Documentary evidence established that, as early as 1978, Bishop Marcinkus was actively ensuring that the fact that these companies were owned by the Vatican was suppressed. As for the Vatican’s lack of knowledge of the companies it owned, one example will suffice. UTC, United Trading Corporation of Panama, is one of the companies referred to in the letters of comfort, a company that the Vatican now claims it knew nothing about until shortly before the notorious letters were written by Marcinkus. Documentation dated November 21st, 1974, duly signed by Vatican Bank officials, requests that Calvi’s Banca del Gottardo arrange on behalf of the Vatican Bank the formation of a company called United Trading Corporation.
For Calvi the illegal scheme had many virtues. And what did the Vatican Bank gain? It gained money. Vast amounts of it. Calvi bought his own shares, from himself; at greatly inflated prices, but on paper these shares were legally owned, and still are legally owned, by the Panamanian companies who, in turn, are owned by the Vatican. Calvi duly turned over the annual dividend on the huge block of shares to their rightful owners, the Vatican Bank. The sum involved varied over the years but averages out annually at 2 million dollars.
That was but the tip of the iceberg. More substantial gains can be traced. For example, in 1980 the Vatican Bank sold 2 million shares in a Rome-based international construction company called Vianini. The shares were sold to a small Panamanian company called Laramie. It was the first stage of a deal in which it was planned that the Vatican would sell to Laramie 6 million shares in Vianini. The price of the shares was grossly inflated. The first 2 million cost Laramie 20 million dollars. Laramie is yet another of the companies owned by the Vatican. It might be considered a futile exercise to sell yourself your own shares at an inflated figure. It becomes less futile if you are using someone else’s money, as Calvi had demonstrated over the years. The 20 million dollars to pay for the shares came from Roberto Calvi. And the Vatican Bank kept the shares it already owned and the 20 million dollars as well. Further, it did not and never has owned 6 million shares in Vianini. Its maximum stake in the company has never been more than 3 million shares. It was with schemes like this that Calvi paid off Marcinkus.
In March 1982, Archbishop Marcinkus granted a rare interview. It was given to the Italian weekly Panorama. His comments about Roberto Calvi are particularly illuminating, coming as they did just eight months after Calvi had been fined 13.7 million dollars and sentenced to four years’ imprisonment, and only seven months after the Vatican and Marcinkus discovered (if we believe the Vatican version) that Calvi had stolen over a billion dollars and left the Vatican to pay the bill.
Calvi merits our trust. This I have no reason to doubt. We have no intention of ceding the Banco Ambrosiano shares in our possession: and furthermore, we have other investments in this group, for example in the Banca Cattolica, which are going very well.
It is on a par with that other eulogy given by Marcinkus to the USA Government attorneys and the men from the FBI, who were investigating the alleged involvement of Marcinkus in a billion dollar counterfeit bond swindle in April 1973. On that occasion, it may be remembered, Marcinkus was extolling the virtues of a man he now claims to have hardly ever met, a man who, for his part, insists, ‘We met many many times over the course of the years in which we did business together. Marcinkus was my partner in two banks.’ That man is Michele Sindona who, apart from his many other crimes, is responsible for the biggest single banking disaster in United States history, a man whom Marcinkus considered to be ‘well ahead of his time as far as banking matters are concerned’.
It may be argued on behalf of Marcinkus that his observation was made a year before Il Crack Sindona. In 1980, six years after the Sindona crash, Marcinkus was ready to testify on behalf of Sindona and was only stopped by the intervention of Cardinal Casaroli, who felt obliged to overrule Pope John Paul II.
Today, there is only one reason why Marcinkus has not been further elevated to cardinal. Despite the massive world-wide disgrace that his activities have brought upon the Vatican and Roman Catholicism, Karol Wojtyla was still going ahead with plans to give the man from Cicero a red hat. Again, only the insistence of Casaroli saved the day. It would seem the Pope takes a more tolerant view of sins perpetrated behind a bank counter than he does of sins perpetrated in bed.
With regard to the murder of Albino Luciani, Marcinkus had the motive and the opportunity. One of the many functions he performed for Paul VI was that of the role of personal Papal bodyguard and security adviser. As such his knowledge of the security arrangements, such as they were, was unsurpassed. Exactly why the President of the IOR was wandering around the Vatican City shortly after 6.30 a.m. on the morning on which Albino Luciani was discovered dead had yet to be established. Research indicates that Marcinkus could not normally be found near the bank premises at such an early hour. Unlike Villot he did not live inside the Vatican walls but at the Villa Stritch in Rome. Marcinkus brought many facets to his work in the Vatican Bank; not least were elements of his early childhood in Al Capone’s Cicero. ‘How are your gangster friends in Chicago, Paul?’ was a running joke in the early 1970s. It was heard less after Sindona’s trial. It is not heard at all after the Calvi débâcle.
If not actively involved in the conspiracy to murder Albino Luciani it is possible that Marcinkus acted as a catalyst, wittingly or unwittingly. Many years ago an English king cried out, ‘Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?’ and soon after, the Roman Catholic Church had a martyr in the person of Thomas à Becket. There is no doubt that Marcinkus conveyed in full his fears on the new Papacy to Roberto Calvi. There is equally no doubt that Albino Luciani was about to remove Marcinkus from the Vatican Bank and cut off all links with Banco Ambrosiano. Did the fears that Marcinkus expressed not only to Calvi but to others about this new Pope provoke the course of events that, on the morning of September 29th, left Bishop Marcinkus open-mouthed and stunned when a Swiss Guard told him the Pope was dead?
Michele Sindona is often incorrectly referred to as ‘God’s Banker’. A more accurate label would be ‘God’s Speculator’. At the time of Albino Luciani’s murder, Sindona was fighting an extradition order served by the Italian Government. He was also wanted for questioning in regard to a wide variety of financial crimes in a number of other countries. By September 1978 the likelihood of the United States authorities initiating criminal proceedings against him, with regard to the Franklin Bank collapse, was becoming more of a certainty daily. These proceedings would save him from extradition but would place him in immediate jeopardy in the United States. The one remaining ace he could hope to play was dependent on Vatican co-operation. Sindona reasoned that if Bishop Marcinkus, Cardinal Guerri and Cardinal Caprio gave evidence on his behalf; a jury would be very heavily influenced by statements from three such august people. With Albino Luciani as Pope, the possibility of any Vatican testimony, let alone favourable testimony, did not exist.
Sindona, as a member of both the Mafia and P2, had not only the motive and opportunity for murder but, as has been amply demonstrated, he also had the capacity. He was a man deranged enough to believe that if an Assistant District Attorney were murdered his troubles in the United States would be at an end – a man deranged enough to believe that if he ordered the murder of Giorgio Ambrosoli his Italian problems would vanish. Such a man clearly had the capacity to remove an honest, reforming Pope.
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 int
o 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.