Authors: David Yallop
With Sindona confronting the reality of a New York trial with the tenacious Kenney prosecuting, he decided to use the Italian Solution on another man who was causing him an even greater degree of discomfort: Giorgio Ambrosoli.
On September 29th, 1974, the attorney Giorgio Ambrosoli was appointed the liquidator of Sindona’s Banca Privata Italiana. As previously recorded, Banca Privata had been created by Sindona in July 1974 when he merged two of his banks, Banca Unione and Banca Privata Finanziaria – one large bent bank to replace two medium-sized bent banks. By 1979 no man knew more about Sindona’s crooked dealings than Giorgio Ambrosoli. Appointed liquidator by the Treasury Ministry and the Governor of the Bank of Italy, Ambrosoli
had begun the nightmare task of unravelling the affairs of a modern Machiavelli. As early as March 21st, 1975 the cautious and careful Ambrosoli, in a secret report to Italy’s Solicitor General, showed he was convinced of the criminality of Sindona’s activities. The evidence he had studied at that date satisfied him that far from the bankruptcy being caused merely by bad business practices, Sindona and the management running his banks in early 1974 ‘wanted the February operations to create the circumstances for bankruptcy’. It had been a coldly planned looting.
Giorgio Ambrosoli was a most courageous man. At about the same time that he was advising the Solicitor General of his preliminary findings, he confided some of his inner feelings to his wife. ‘Whatever happens, I’ll certainly pay a high price for taking this job. But I knew that before taking it on and I’m not complaining. It has been a unique chance for me to do something for the country . . . Obviously I’m making enemies for myself.’
Slowly and methodically Ambrosoli began to make sense of what Sindona had deliberately made senseless. The parking of shares, the buy-backs, the dazzling transfers through the myriad of companies. While Sindona was talking to USA university students of his dreams of cosmic capitalism, the quiet, circumspect Milanese lawyer was establishing beyond all doubt that Sindona was corrupt to his highly manicured fingertips.
In 1977 Ambrosoli was approached by Rome lawyer Rodolfo Guzzi with a complicated offer to buy Banca Privata out of bankruptcy. Ambrosoli discovered that Guzzi was working on behalf of Michele Sindona. He declined the offer despite the fact that at least two Christian Democrat Ministers supported it.
The power Sindona still wielded can be gauged from this Ministerial support. Ambrosoli was given a further illustration of that power when the Governor of the Bank of Italy told him of the pressure being exerted by Franco Evangelisti, Prime Minister Andreotti’s right-hand man, who was urging the Bank of Italy to arrive at a typically Italian solution. He wanted Governor Baffi to authorize the central bank to cover Sindona’s debts. Baffi bravely refused. The Ambrosoli investigation went on.
Ambrosoli continued to come across references in the mountain of papers he was diligently working his way through to ‘the 500’; other references made it clear that these 500 people were the super exporters on the black market. The men and women who, with the aid of Sindona and the Vatican Bank, had poured currency out of Italy
illegally. The actual list of names might continue to elude Ambrosoli but very little else did. He ascertained that a large number of public organizations, respectable institutions like the insurance giant
INPDAI
, placed their funds at Sindona’s banks for a lower rate of interest than was generally current – 8 per cent rather than 13 per cent. They received, however, a secret interest rate that went directly and privately into the pockets of the directors of
INPDAI
and the other august companies.
Ambrosoli identified many of the devices that Sindona had used to export money illegally, including buying dollars at higher than the market rate with the balance paid to a foreign account in London, Switzerland or the USA.
Ambrosoli began to compile his own list of guilty names. It never reached 500 – Michele Sindona saw to that – but it reached 77 names and included those trusted men of the Vatican, Massimo Spada and Luigi Mennini. The liquidator collated irrefutable evidence of Vatican Bank complicity in many of Sindona’s crimes. Throughout the entire period of his work on behalf of the Bank of Italy this man, working virtually single-handed, was subjected to the range of Sindona behaviour. Sindona brought actions alleging embezzlement against Ambrosoli. Then the actions would be dropped to be replaced by a different approach from Sindona’s son-in-law, Pier Sandro Magnoni, inviting Ambrosoli to become President of Sindona’s new bank, ‘once you have settled this tiring business of the bankruptcies’.
Sindona’s P2 infiltration of those whom Ambrosoli considered he could trust was so total that Magnoni was able to quote verbatim a passage from a secret report compiled by Ambrosoli that had been officially seen by only a handful of bank officials.
By March 1979 Ambrosoli was able to put a figure on the size of Il Crack Sindona as far as Banca Privata was concerned. The loss was 257 billion lire. Also by March 1979 Ambrosoli had been subjected to a series of threatening phone calls. The callers always had Italian/American accents.
The threats and the insults grew in intensity from late 1978. The callers varied their tactics from tempting Ambrosoli with offers of vast amounts of money to outright threats. It was made quite clear on whose behalf the calls were being made. ‘Why don’t you go and see Sindona in the States? As a friend,’ said one caller with a heavy American accent. Ambrosoli declined the invitation and began taping the phone calls. He told his friends and colleagues of the calls. Eventually he played one of the tape recordings to one of Sindona’s
lawyers. A few days later the next call came. ‘You dirty bastard. Think you’ve been clever taping the calls, eh?’ The Sindona lawyer was later to admit that after hearing the tape he had immediately called Sindona in New York.
On April 10th, 1979 Sindona confronted another man he considered an enemy, Enrico Cuccia, managing director of Mediobanca, a publicly-owned investment bank. Sindona’s assessment was accurate. Cuccia had thwarted the Sindona takeover of Bastogi in 1972. He had arrived at the conclusion long before many others that Sindona was a megalomaniac crook. During their April 1979 meeting Cuccia was given ample evidence to justify the conclusion he had arrived at nearly eight years earlier. What had promptod Cuccia’s visit to New York was a series of phone calls that
he
had been receiving from men with American/Italian accents. These calls, like those to Ambrosoli, were of a threatening nature. While Ambrosoli chose to stay with his work in Milan, Cuccia elected to confront Sindona.
Sindona made a number of demands. One was that Cuccia should have the Italian arrest warrant withdrawn – the fact that in his absence he had been sentenced to three-and-a-half years’ imprisonment in 1976 Sindona brushed aside as a trivial point. Sindona further demanded that Cuccia should find 257 billion lire and bail out Banca Privata. For good measure he also demanded that Cuccia should find even more money to provide for the Sindona family. Apart from making the gracious gesture of allowing Signor Cuccia to continue to live, it is unclear what Sindona was offering in return.
During the course of this extraordinary conversation Sindona, perhaps by way of demonstrating Cuccia’s very real danger, introduced the subject of Giorgio Ambrosoli. ‘That damned liquidator of my Bank is harming me and therefore I want to have him killed. I will make him disappear in such a way that he leaves no trace.’ This is the reality of Mafia mentality. Al Pacino and well-cut suits, lovable children and doting fathers is the fantasy world of Mafia. The reality is men like Michele Sindona.
These threats were uttered less than one month after Sindona had been indicted on 99 counts. The same mentality which concluded that the extradition proceedings would vanish if Assistant District Attorney John Kenney were murdered was at work again. If Ambrosoli could be silenced, the criminal charges would presumably dribble away like the morning mist. A mind which functions with such perverted reasoning could plan to kill a Pope without hesitating.
Enrico Cuccia left the meeting unimpressed. In October 1979 a
bomb exploded under the front door of Cuccia’s flat in Milan. Luckily no one was injured. Giorgio Ambrosoli was less fortunate.
It was apparent to all parties concerned with the forthcoming trial of Sindona that the evidence of Giorgio Ambrosoli was of paramount importance. On June 9th, 1979, the Judge who had been appointed to try the Sindona case, Thomas Griesa, arranged for Ambrosoli to swear a deposition in Milan.
By that date the man who was given a 100,000 dollar contract to kill Giorgio Ambrosoli had been in the Hotel Splendido, Milan for 24 hours. He was booked in as Robert McGovern. He was also known as ‘Billy the Exterminator’. His real name is William Arico. At the first class hotel, less than 50 metres from Milan Central Station, Arico dined with the five men who were to assist him with the murder. His two main accomplices were Charles Arico, his son, and Rocky Messina. Their weapons included an M11 machine gun, specially fitted with a silencer, and five P28 revolvers. Arico hired a Fiat car and began to stalk Ambrosoli.
The request to take a detailed and lengthy statement from Ambrosoli had initially been made by Sindona’s lawyers. They had hoped to demonstrate the absurdity of the charges with which their client stood accused in New York. Their awakening which began on the morning of July 9th was rude in the extreme. Four years of work, over 100,000 sheets of carefully, meticulously prepared notes plus the mind of an exceptionally gifted lawyer began quietly to reveal the appalling truth in front of a cluster of American lawyers, two special marshals representing New York Judge Griesa and the Italian Judge Giovanni Galati.
When the court adjourned after the first day’s hearing, Sindona’s lawyers could easily be identified as they left. They were the men with worried faces.
With Arico trailing him, the oblivious Ambrosoli went on to another meeting. This was with the deputy superintendent of the Palermo police force and head of that city’s CID, Boris Giuliano. The subject was the same as the one on which Ambrosoli had been testifying all day – Michele Sindona. Giuseppe Di Cristina, a Mafia enforcer employed by the families Gambino, Inzerillo and Spatola, had been murdered in Palermo in May 1978. On his body Giuliano had discovered cheques and other documents which indicated that Sindona had been recycling the proceeds from heroin sales through the Vatican Bank to his Amincor Bank in Switzerland. Having compared notes on their separate investigations the two men agreed to have a fuller
meeting once Ambrosoli had finished his testimony to the US lawyers.
Later that day, Ambrosoli was still not finished with Sindona. He had a long telephone conversation with Lt-Colonel Antonio Varisco, Head of the Security Service in Rome. The subject was the matter Varisco was currently investigating, P2.
On July 10th, as his deposition continued, Ambrosoli dropped one of a large number of bombshells. Detailing how Banca Cattolica del Veneto had changed hands and how Pacchetti had been unloaded by Sindona to Calvi, Ambrosoli stated that Sindona had paid a ‘brokerage fee of 6.5 million dollars to a Milanese banker and an American bishop.’
On July 11th Ambrosoli completed his deposition. It was agreed that he would return the following day and sign the record of his testimony and that the week after he would be available for questioning and clarification of his evidence by the US prosecutors and Sindona’s lawyers.
Shortly before midnight on the 11th, Ambrosoli arrived outside his apartment. From the window his wife waved. They were about to have a belated dinner. As Ambrosoli moved towards his door Arico and two of his aides appeared from the shadows. The question came out of the darkness.
‘Giorgio Ambrosoli?’
‘Si.’
Arico aimed at point blank range and at least four bullets from a P38 entered the lawyer’s chest. He died instantly.
By 6 a.m. Arico was in Switzerland. One hundred thousand dollars was transferred from a Sindona account at Calvi’s Banca del Gottardo into an account Arico had under the name of Robert McGovern at the Crédit Suisse in Geneva. The account number is 415851-22-1.
On July 13th, 1979, less than forty-eight hours after the murder of Giorgio Ambrosoli, Lt-Colonel Antonio Varisco was being driven in a white BMW along the Lungotevere Arnaldo da Brescia in Rome. It was 8.30 a.m. A white Fiat 128 pulled alongside. A sawn-off shotgun appeared through its window. Four shots were fired and the Lt-Colonel and his chauffeur were dead. One hour later the Red Brigades ‘claimed’ responsibility.
On July 21st, 1979, Boris Giuliano went into the Lux Bar in Via Francesco Paolo Di Biasi in Palermo for a morning coffee. The time was 8.05 a.m. Having drunk his coffee he moved towards the cash desk to pay. A man approached and fired six shots into Giuliano. The cafe was crowded at the time. Subsequent police questioning established that no
one had seen anything. No one had heard anything. Boris Giuliano’s position was taken by Giuseppe Impallomeni, a member of P2.
Not even the members of the Red Brigades ‘claimed’, falsely or otherwise, the responsibility for the murders of Giorgio Ambrosoli and Boris Giuliano. When news of the murder of Ambrosoli was flashed to New York, Michele Sindona, the man who had paid to have the liquidator taken care of by an exterminator, responded in typical fashion. ‘No one must link me with this act of cowardice and I will take decisive legal action against anyone who does.’
Two years earlier during an interview with
Il Fiorino
Sindona had made a far more significant statement. Talking of the ‘plot that exists against me’, he had listed the leaders who in Sindona’s mind included Giorgio Ambrosoli. Sindona observed: ‘There are many who should be afraid . . . I repeat, there are very many.’