In God's Name (25 page)

By mid-1973 the hole in Sindona’s banks had reached enormous proportions. It is one thing to move large amounts of money on paper from bank to bank, contravening all kinds of laws and committing countless offences (provided the bribes are placed in the right hands it is a game that is endless). It is something else when you syphon off capital in large amounts to third parties. A hole begins to appear. It fills up with the declaration of false and nonexistent profits, but that is only on paper. The hard cash meanwhile is continuing to pour out to the third parties. The hole grows bigger and the false and non-existent profits needed to fill it have to be proportionally greater. Sindona was pouring out other people’s money in a variety of directions. P2, The Christian Democrats, The Vatican, right-wing juntas in South America – these were just a few of the major beneficiaries. Many of his staff were creating their own personal fortunes too.

Appropriately The Shark sat at his desk practising the Japanese art of Origami. The executive suite in his Sixth Avenue office in New York was littered with countless examples of his paper-folding expertise – just like so many of his companies, empty little boxes piled one upon another. The Shark was now involved in a wild, intercontinental
juggling act – the merging of this company with that finance house, the transfer of those shares for that company. Merge. Divide. Re-merge.

Il Crack Sindona, the Italians called it. When it came, the collapse of the monument to greed and corruption that Sindona had erected was not unimpressive. He had talked grandly of not knowing what his personal wealth was, but accepted that it was in the order of half a billion dollars. Sindona was a trifle confused. The reality was somewhat different: but then a grasp of reality had never been one of The Shark’s attributes. His self-delusions were fed by the illusions of others, as the meteoric pattern of his career shows:

September 1973:
at the Waldorf Astoria in New York the Prime Minister of Italy, Giulio Andreotti, rises to his feet at a luncheon and, delivering a eulogy to The Shark, hails him as ‘the Saviour of the Lira’.

January 1974:
Grand Hotel, Rome. American Ambassador John Volpe awards The Shark, ‘The Man of the Year’ citation.

March 1974:
prices on the Milan Stock Exchange are flying high, as is the exchange rate against the dollar at 825 lire. If Sindona were to close down the huge currency operations now he would emerge with a profit of at least 100 billion lire. Anna Bonomi, a rival in the Milan financial world, makes an excellent offer for Sindona’s holding in Immobilaire. Sindona refuses to sell.

April 1974:
the Stock Market goes into decline and the exchange rate falls dramatically. It is the beginning of Il Crack Sindona. The Franklin Bank in New York announces a net operating income for the first quarter of 2 cents per share compared with the previous year’s 68 cents per share. Even this is a falsified figure. The reality is that the bank had suffered a 40 million dollar loss.

May 1974:
Franklin has the brakes put on its massive currency speculation. National Westminster of London object to the volume of Franklin’s sterling clearings through its account. In the previous week they have averaged £50 million per day. Franklin now announce that they will not declare a quarterly dividend, the first time since the Depression that a major American bank has been forced to omit a payment to shareholders. The Shark tells tbe Board of Società Generale Immobilaire that the balance sheet is the best in the company’s history.

July 1974:
the holes are showing in Italy and the USA. In an attempt to fill the Italian hole, The Shark merges Banca Unione and Banca Privata Finanziaria. He calls the new creation Banca Privata. Instead of two medium-size bent banks in Milan, he now has one very large bent bank in Italy’s financial centre. Instead of two large holes, one gigantic hole is revealed: a 200 billion lire hole.

August 1974:
it is time for the Establishment to rally round. In Italy Banco di Roma, having taken a large part of the Sindona empire as collateral, pushes 128 million dollars into Banca Privata in an attempt to fill the hole. In the United States the Government, fearing the collapse of Franklin will trigger off a capitalistic Armageddon, give the Franklin unlimited access to Federal funds. Over two billion dollars flow from the reserve into the Franklin.

September 1974:
Banca Privata goes into compulsory liquidation. Estimated losses are in excess of 300 million dollars. This includes 27 million dollars of Vatican money plus their share of the Bank.

October 3rd:
Licio Gelli repays a little of the huge investment that Sindona has made in P2. By courtesy of P2 members planted in the judiciary and the police force, he is advised that Sindona will be arrested the following day. Gelli tips off Sindona.

October 4th:
an arrest warrant for Michele Sindona is issued. Sindona has fled the country. Ever a man of vision, he has previously changed his nationality. He is now a citizen of Switzerland. The boy from Sicily flies to his homeland in Geneva.

October 8th:
the Franklin Bank collapses. Losses to the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation – 2 billion dollars. It is the biggest bank crash in American history.

October 1974/January 1975:
Europe resounds to the noise of crashing banks that are either Sindona-controlled or -linked – Bankhaus Wolff A.G. of Hamburg, Bankhaus I.K. Herstatt of Cologne, Amincor Bank of Zürich, and Finabank of Geneva. With regard to Finabank, Swiss banking sources estimate Vatican losses at 240 million dollars. The Finabank’s losses on foreign exchange dealings alone are a minimum of 82 million dollars.

The Italian authorities, or rather that section of Italian authority not controlled by P2, had by this stage become very agitated. Sindona, having eventually surfaced in the USA, showed a marked disinclination to return to Italy. From October 1974 a long battle began to extradite him. This battle was destined to have a direct influence on the ultimate fate of the man who, at that time, was preoccupied in Venice with trying to raise money to help a group of mentally handicapped people. It would be difficult to find a greater contrast between two men than the values which separated Albino Luciani from The Shark.

Though Sindona’s presence was urgently required in Italy, he had most certainly become
persona non grata
inside the Vatican. As Secretary of State Cardinal Villot brought Pope Paul news of each new
aspect of The Crack. His Holiness grew more distressed. It has been said that Pope Paul had aspired to be the first poor Pope in modern times. This is a fallacy. The divestment of the majority of the Vatican’s Italian holdings had but one aim: more profit. Prompted by the desire to avoid Italian taxes on share profits and for a lower profile in Italy, Vatican Incorporated had been seduced by Sindona and his clan with the prospect of greater wealth through investment in the USA, Switzerland, Germany and other countries.

The story that the Vatican would have one believe today is that Pope Paul alone was responsible over nearly a decade for the Vatican’s deep and continuing involvement with Michele Sindona. It is yet another Vatican fallacy. Significantly this particular lie never floated to the surface during Pope Paul’s lifetime. Persuaded by his secretary Monsignor Pasquale Macchi, by his advisers Cardinals Guerri and Benedetto Argentieri from the Special Administration, by his Secretary of State Cardinal Villot and by Umberto Ortolani, that Sindona was the answer to the Vatican’s prayers, the Pope undoubtedly opened the bronze doors to The Shark and beckoned. Once inside he did not want for company. Indeed, the Pope might have been alerted if his advisers had exercised elementary caution. Close study of the events already described lead to the irresistible conclusion that many within the Vatican walls were ready, willing and eager to join in the criminal activities of Michele Sindona. Were Macchi, Argentieri, Guerri and Villot all honourable men? Were Marcinkus, Mennini and Spada of the Vatican Bank all honourable men? Was His Holiness Pope Paul VI an honourable man?

Bishop Marcinkus was obliged to suffer the indignity of several sessions of intensive questioning by the Italian authorities about his personal and business relationship with Sindona. Marcinkus, who sat at the behest of Sindona and Roberto Calvi as a director in the Bahamas tax haven of Nassau, Marcinkus, the close friend of Sindona, in April 1973, during another intensive interrogation, had told the USA Government attorneys:

Michele and I are very good friends. We’ve known each other for several years. My financial dealings with him, however, have only been very limited. He is, you know, one of the wealthiest industrialists in Italy. He is well ahead of his time as far as financial matters are concerned.

Less than two years later the honourable Bishop Marcinkus was
questioned by the Italian magazine,
L’Espresso
about his relationship with Sindona. On the morning of February 20th 1975, the Bishop said: ‘The truth is that I don’t even know Sindona. How can I have lost money because of him? The Vatican has not lost a cent, the rest is fantasy.’

For a bank president, Bishop Marcinkus constantly displayed an alarmingly poor memory. He had told the USA Government attorneys in 1973: ‘My financial dealings with Michele Sindona have only been very limited’. On the contrary, his financial dealings with the Mafia’s banker were large and continuous from the late 1960s until shortly before Il Crack Sindona in 1975. Less than two years before his interrogation by the US attorneys and the FBI Sindona had played a crucial role in Marcinkus’s sale of Banca Cattolica to Roberto Calvi for 46.5 million dollars, a deal that resulted in Sindona paying an illegal kickback to Calvi and Marcinkus of 6.5 million dollars. This, like the later losses inflicted on the Vatican by Sindona, was no ‘fantasy’.

Dr Luigi Mennini, Secretary Inspector of the Vatican Bank, was arrested as a result of the Sindona crash and his passport was withdrawn. Mennini, who worked directly under Marcinkus, denied everything and knew nothing. Possibly one of his sons, Alessandro, who held a high executive position in the foreign affairs section of Banco Ambrosiano, the nerve centre of much of the currency speculation, would have been equally mystified if questioned about the criminal activities of both Sindona and Calvi.

Before Il Crack Sindona, Mennini speculated, on behalf of the Vatican Bank, in foreign currencies alongside Sindona’s colleague, Carlo Bordoni. Over the years Bordoni got to know him well.

Despite the fact that he acted like a prelate he was a seasoned gambler. He tormented me in every sense of the word because he wanted to earn money in ever-increasing quantities. He speculated in Finabank, in shares, in commodities. I recall one day he gave me a short letter from Paul VI which gave me his benediction for my work as consultant to the Holy See. Mennini was virtually a slave to Sindona’s blackmail. Sindona had often threatened to make public information about Mennini’s illegal operations carried out with Finabank.

Massimo Spada, administrative secretary to the Vatican Bank, again directly under Bishop Marcinkus, although officially retired from the Bank in 1964, continued to represent a wide cross-section of Vatican
interests. Like Mennini, Spada opened his front door at dawn one morning to find the Italian Finance Police there armed with search warrants. His personal bank accounts were frozen by Court Order, his passport was withdrawn. Three separate legal cases were started against him, all alleging a wide range of banking law violations and fraudulent bankruptcy.

Spada, who on Carlo Bordoni’s sworn statements was another slave to Sindona’s blackmail, who was fully acquainted with all of Sindona’s illegal operations, expressed the classic Vatican Bank position when questioned by
L’Espresso
in February, 1975: ‘Who would have thought that Sindona was a madman?’ Spada asked. This man who was a director of three of Sindona’s banks, for which he was very highly paid, continued, ‘In 45 years I have never found myself in a situation of this kind. I have lived through the most difficult periods, but I have never seen anything like it. Raving lunatics started to buy billions of dollars with European currencies. All the losses come from that. Who could have known that every day Mr Bordoni was selling 50 or 100 million dollars against Swiss francs or Dutch guilders? What does a Board of Directors know of the mad operations which took place between January and June 1974?’

At the time Spada made these observations he was considered, at the age of 70, to be so brilliant as a business man that he was still on the board of directors of 35 companies.

And so it went on. No one in Vatican Incorporated knew Sindona or anything about his criminal activities. The trusting Men of God had been ‘conned’ by the Devil.

Is it possible that they were indeed all honourable men who were betrayed by Michele Sindona? Is it possible that Vatican representatives like Mennini and Spada could sit on the boards of Sindona’s banks and remain ignorant of the crimes Sindona and Bordoni were perpetrating? Massimo Spada gave the game away during his interview with
L’Espresso.
He was asked if it was indeed only Sindona and Bordoni who were guilty of currency speculation.

You must be joking. Using hundreds and hundreds of billions in currency operations has become a habit for the banks. When an average-sized dealer on the Milan market moves an average value of 25–30 billion lire and a small Milanese bank moves 10–12 billion a day in currency, one has to conclude that if the entire Italian banking system did not go up in smoke we have to thank Providence, God, St Ambrose, St George and above all St
Januarius. I would say in this respect that they should have sent legal letters to all Italian banks warning them they were being investigated.