Authors: David Yallop
By early January 1979 the financial circles of Milan were yet again preoccupied with rumours about The Knight, Roberto Calvi. Judge Emilio Alessandrini, having carefully studied a summary of the 500-page report compiled by the Bank of Italy, ordered Lt-Colonel Cresta, the commander of the Milan tax police, to send his men into the ‘priests’ bank’. The brief was to check point by point the many criminal irregularities that were detailed in the report. No one outside official circles had access to the report, no one, that is, apart from Calvi and Gelli.
On January 21st
L’Espresso
commented on the rumours that were flying around the city, including the alarming news that Calvi and his entire board of directors were about to be arrested and that Calvi’s passport was about to be withdrawn. Something had to be done quickly before the general public created a run on Banco Ambrosiano.
On the morning of January 29th Alessandrini kissed his wife goodbye, then drove his young son to school. Having dropped the boy he began to drive to his office. A few seconds before 8.30 a.m. he stopped at the traffic lights on via Muratori. He was still gazing at the red light when five men approached his car and began firing bullets into his body.
Later in the day a group of left-wing terrorists called Prima Linea claimed responsibility for the murder. The group also left a leaflet about the murder in a telephone booth in Milan Central Station. Neither the phone call nor the leaflet gave any clear reason for the murder.
Why would an extreme left-wing group cold-bloodedly murder a judge who was nationally known for his investigations into right-wing terrorism? Emilio Alessandrini was one of the leading investigators into the Piazza Fontana bombing, which was acknowledged to be a right-wing atrocity. Why would Prima Linea murder a man who was clearly attempting, through legal and proper channels, what they, in theory, would most applaud – to bring right-wing criminal elements to task for their acts?
Groups such as Prima Linea and the Red Brigades do not merely kill and maim to political and ideological order. They are guns for hire. The links, for example, between the Red Brigades and the Naples Camorra (local Mafia) are well documented.
At the time of writing, five men who have already confessed to the murder of Alessandrini are standing trial. Their evidence concerning
the actual murder is full of detail, but when it comes to the motive their evidence raises more questions than it answers.
Marco Donat Cattin, the second man who opened fire on the trapped, unarmed and helpless judge, observed: ‘We waited for the newspapers to come out with reports of the attack and we found in the magistrate’s obituaries the motives to justify the attack.’
Three days after the murder on the afternoon of February 1st, Roberto Calvi was enjoying a drink at a Milan cocktail party. The conversation inevitably turned to the recent outrage. Calvi promptly attempted to elicit sympathy, not for Signora Alessandrini and her fatherless children, but for himself: ‘It really is such a shame. Only the day before this happened Alessandrini had told me that he was taking no further action and that he was going to have the case filed.’
The murder of Luciani had given Marcinkus, Calvi, Sindona and their P2 friends a momentary breathing space. Now the murder of Emilio Alessandrini bought them further time. The investigation initiated by Judge Alessandrini continued, but at a snail’s pace.
In the Bank of Italy, Mario Sarcinelli was acutely aware of the lack of momentum. Sarcinelli and the Governor of the Bank, Paolo Baffi, were determined that the long, complex investigation which had been carried out during the previous year would not be a wasted exercise.
In February 1979 Mario Sarcinelli summoned Calvi to the Bank of Italy. Calvi was questioned closely about Suprafin, about the Ambrosiano relationship with the IOR, about the Nassau branch and about who precisely owned Banco Ambrosiano. With Alessandrini dead Calvi was a new man, or rather his old self. The eyes were again ice cold. Licio Gelli’s protection had inspired an even greater degree of arrogance than normal. He flatly refused to answer Sarcinelli’s questions, but the encounter left Calvi in no doubt that the Bank of Italy investigation had not been inhibited by the latest murder.
Again he discussed his problems with Gelli, who reassured him the matter would be dealt with. Before that problem was resolved there was, however, another matter causing the Masons of P2 considerable concern. This was the problem posed by the lawyer journalist Mino Pecorelli. Among Pecorelli’s many activities was that of editor of an unusual weekly emanating from the agency referred to earlier, OP.
OP has been variously described as ‘muck-raking’ and ‘scandalistic’. It was both. It was also accurate. Throughout the 1970s it acquired and subsequently printed an astonishing number of exposés and allegations on Italian corruption. It became required reading for anyone who was interested in knowing exactly who was robbing
whom. Despite the stringent laws on libel in Italy it led a charmed life. Pecorelli clearly had access to the most highly sensitive information. Italian journalists frequently went into print with OP-inspired articles. Privately they tried to ascertain who was behind this news agency which was clearly above the law, but OP remained a mysterious organism. Pecorelli’s sister Rosita alleged during a television interview that the news agency OP was financed by Prime Minister Andreotti.
In the early 1970s the name of Michele Sindona was frequently linked with OP. Pecorelli obviously had sources working within the Italian Secret Service, but his major contacts were inside an organization more powerful and indeed more secret than such official Government agencies. Mino Pecorelli was a member of P2 and it was from this illegal Masonic Lodge that he derived much of the information that set the Italian news media buzzing. At one Lodge meeting Licio Gelli invited members to contribute documents and information which would be passed on to OP. The prime function of OP during this period was therefore to further Gelli’s ambitions and the aims of P2. In mid-1978, however, Pecorelli decided upon a little private enterprise. He obtained information about one of the biggest thefts in Italian financial history. The mastermind behind the theft was Licio Gelli. In the early 1970s the scheme was responsible for robbing Italy of 2.5 billion dollars in oil tax revenue. In Italy, the same petroleum product is used to heat property as to drive diesel trucks. The oil for heating is dyed to distinguish it from that used for vehicles and is taxed at a rate fifty times lower than the diesel fuel. It was a situation ready-made for a criminal like Gelli. Under his guidance oil magnate Bruno Musselli, a P2 member, doctored the dyes. Head of the Finance Police, General Raffaele Giudice, a P2 member, falsified the paperwork to ensure that all the fuel was taxed at the lower rate. The fuel was then sold to petrol outlets which paid the conspirators at the higher rate.
The profits were then transferred, thanks to P2 member Michele Sindona, through the Vatican Bank to a series of secret accounts at Sindona’s Swiss bank, Finabank. Licio Gelli became a familiar sight walking through the Saint Anna gate with large suitcases containing billions of stolen lire.
General Giudice was appointed head of the Finance Police by Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti, a close friend of Licio Gelli. This particular appointment had been made after Cardinal Poletti, Cardinal Vicar of Rome, had written to the Prime Minister strongly recommending Giudice for the post. Poletti, it will be recalled, was one of the men
Albino Luciani had planned to remove from Rome. The Vatican link with this scandal was unknown to Pecorelli, but he had learned enough about this gigantic theft from the State to begin the publication of small titbits of information. A deputation that included Christian Democrat Senator Claudio Vitalone, Judge Carlo Testi and General Donato lo Prete of the Finance Police bought his silence. The articles on the scandal ceased.
Realizing that more money could be obtained by such dubious techniques, Pecorelli began to write about the Masons. His issue of early September 1978, containing the names of over one hundred Vatican Masons, had been a warning shot across Gelli’s bows. The fact that a copy arrived on the desk of Albino Luciani who, having carefully checked it, began to act upon the information, was the supreme irony for Licio Gelli, who was already acutely aware of the threat Luciani posed to his paymaster Roberto Calvi.
With Luciani dead, Gelli attempted to deal with Pecorelli. He bribed him. Inevitably Pecorelli demanded more money for his silence. Gelli refused to pay. Pecorelli published the first of what he promised would be a series of articles. It revealed that Gelli, the pillar of extreme right-wing Fascism, had spied for the Communists during the war and had continued to work for them afterwards. Pecorelli, having now embraced the mantle of a fearless investigative journalist, promised his readers he would reveal everything about P2. For good measure he revealed that Licio Gelli, former Nazi, ex-Fascist and late Communist, also had very strong links with the CIA. By revealing so much of the truth, Pecorelli’s colleagues in P2 concluded that he had betrayed them.
On March 20th Gelli telephoned Pecorelli at his Rome office. He suggested a peace talk over dinner the following day. ‘If that is convenient.’ It was. During the course of the conversation Pecorelli mentioned that he would be working late at the office that evening but dinner on the following day would be possible. It was a dinner that Pecorelli never ate.
Mino Pecorelli left his office in via Orazio at 9.15 p.m. and headed towards his car parked a short distance away. The two bullets that killed him as he sat in his car were fired from within his mouth, a classic Sicilian Mafia gesture of
sasso in bocca,
a rock in the mouth of a dead man to demonstrate he will talk no more.
Unable to have dinner with his old friend, Licio Gelli passed the time by opening up his secret files of P2 members and writing ‘deceased’ alongside the entry for Mino Pecorelli.
No one has ever ‘claimed’ responsibility for Pecorelli’s murder but in 1983 Antonio Viezzer, at one time a high-ranking officer in SID, Italy’s Secret Service, was arrested and charged on suspicion of involvement in the killing of Pecorelli. Antonio Viezzer was a member of P2.
A few days before Pecorelli was silenced for ever, one of the men he had named on the list of Vatican Masons, Cardinal Jean Villot, preceded him to the grave. He died still holding the vast array of official titles that had been his during Luciani’s brief reign. For a man who, if not a party to the criminal conspiracy to murder Albino Luciani, most certainly gave that conspiracy vital aid, Villot’s own death, with its various stages described in a series of well-documented medical reports, serves as a curious contrast to that of Luciani, who ‘died like a flower in the night’.
While the Vatican buried its late Secretary of State, the battle for a little temporal purification continued across the Tiber. The Head of Vigilance of the Bank of Italy, Mario Sarcinelli, and his Governor Paolo Baffi were by now demanding swift action on the Calvi investigation. They insisted that there was more than sufficient evidence to justify immediate arrest. Clearly Gelli and Calvi agreed with them.
On March 25th, 1979 the arrests were made – but not of Roberto Calvi and his colleagues. The men arrested were Sarcinelli and Baffi. Rome magistrate Judge Mario Alibrandi, a man of known right-wing sympathies, granted Baffi bail because of his age, 67 years. Sarcinelli was less fortunate and was thrown into prison. The charges against the two men, of failing to disclose knowledge of a crime, were clearly specious and after two weeks Sarcinelli was granted bail. The charges, however, would hang over both him and Baffi until January 1980 when it was admitted that they were totally false and without a shred of justification. In the interim the magistrate refused to lift his order which barred Sarcinelli from returning to his position as Head of Vigilance at the Bank for a year. With this action P2 had effectively drawn the teeth of the Bank of Italy. Paolo Baffi, the shocked and distressed Governor of the Bank, resigned in September 1979. The demonstration of the power Calvi and his criminal associates had convinced Baffi that he and his men were fighting a force that was far greater than any wielded by the Bank of Italy. Between the scandal of Sarcinelli’s wrongful imprisonment and Baffi’s resignation, Baffi and his staff were given an ultimate demonstration of just how powerful were the forces ranged against them. The demonstration occurred in Milan. It was organized and paid for by Michele Sindona.
While Calvi and his friends were coping in their own particular way with their problems in Italy, their fellow P2 member, Michele Sindona, was getting his fair share in New York. Sindona had finally beaten the attempts to have him extradited to Italy, but the manner of his victory brought him little comfort.
On March 9th, 1979 the Justice Department indicted Sindona and charged him with 99 counts of fraud, perjury and misappropriation of bank funds. The charges stemmed directly from the collapse of the Franklin National Bank. Sindona, having posted a 3 million dollar bond, was granted bail upon the condition that he presented himself daily to the US Marshal’s office.
In the first week of July 1979 a Federal Court Judge ruled that Sindona could not be extradited to Italy to face bank fraud charges because he was soon to face similar charges in the United States. The extradition treaty between Italy and the United States had a double jeopardy clause. Assistant District Attorney John Kenney commented that the US Government intended to send Sindona back to Italy after the case against him in the United States had been completed.
Kenney, still alive despite the 100,000 dollar contract that had been put out by Sindona’s colleagues, owed his continuing survival to one fact alone. In Italy, to kill a judge or prosecuting counsel is often an effective ploy in persuading the authorities to slow down a prosecution. The Alessandrini murder is an excellent example. In the United States, such a murder would have precisely the opposite effect. A 100,000 dollar fee was very tempting but the professionals knew that Kenney’s murder would result not only in a ruthless pursuit of the killer but also a vigorous acceleration of the prosecution against Sindona.