In God's Name (57 page)

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In late April 1984 Mateos was arrested in West Germany. The Spanish authorities have begun extradition proceedings.

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On Sunday February 19th William Arico fell to his death while trying to escape from the Metropolitan Correctional Center in lower Manhattan. Arico and Michele Sindona were due to face an extradition hearing two days later. The Italian authorities wanted to place both men on trial for the murder of Giorgio Ambrosoli.

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Early in 1984 Cerdana was sentenced to eighteen months in prison. The sentence was suspended. The court received a letter from Gelli in which the Puppet Master recommended leniency. He also apologized for escaping and stated that he was a Victim of political persecution.

Epilogue

If the good that Albino Luciani represented was interred with his bones the evil perpetrated by Roberto Calvi has most certainly lived after him.

Within hours of his body being identified in London alarm bells were ringing in many places throughout Italy. On Monday, June 22nd, the first day the banks were opened after The Knight had been found hanging not far from where the White Friars had offered sanctuary to embezzlers, swindlers and thieves in the Middle Ages, the Banco Ambrosiano, Milan began to experience a heavy run of withdrawals. What is not public knowledge, until now, is that the Vatican Bank suffered the same fate. Many millions of dollars were withdrawn by those members of the Italian Establishment who, privy to the facts, were aware that a 1.3 billion dollar hole in the Ambrosiano group would soon be public knowledge and that the hole was not unconnected with Calvi’s long-standing business and personal relationship with Paul Marcinkus and the IOR.

By September 1982, Marcinkus, the man who had never left the Pope’s side during his visit to Britain in May and June, had become a virtual prisoner within the Vatican. He was replaced as organizer and advance guard of international Papal trips – to have ventured out of Vatican City would have been to invite immediate arrest by the Italian authorities.

Marcinkus continued to function as head of the Vatican Bank and declared that the Vatican did not and would not accept any responsibility for the 1.3 billion dollars which had gone missing.

The Roman Curia refused to accept judicial papers that the Italian
Government attempted to serve on Marcinkus and others at the Vatican Bank. Protocol must be observed at all times, the Curia insisted, even when the theft of over a billion dollars is involved. The papers would have to be handed to the Italian Ambassador to the Vatican.

Vatican City did establish a commission of enquiry after a great deal of prodding from the Italian Government. Simultaneously, the Vatican Bank’s own lawyers busied themselves with an enquiry and at the same time the Italian Government created a commission of enquiry. By now there were jobs for nearly everyone. The lawyers working for Marcinkus came up with their conclusions first.

1   The Institute for the Works of Religion has not received either from the Ambrosiano Group or from Roberto Calvi any monies, and, therefore, does not have to refund anything.

2   The foreign Companies indebted to the Ambrosiano Group have never been run by the IOR which has no knowledge of the operations carried out by the same.

3   It is established that all the payments made by the Ambrosiano Group to the aforementioned Companies were made prior to the so-called ‘letters of comfort’.

4   These latter, by their date of issue, have not exercised any influence on the same payments.

5   In any future checking of the facts, all the above will be proved to be true.

I have already established that these Vatican ‘facts’ are very far from the truth.

The commission of enquiry set up by the Vatican has yet to report. Their conclusions were due at the end of March 1983, then the end of April 1983, then August 1983, then October, then November.

The commission comprises ‘four wise men’. Two of them, by their presence on a commission of enquiry that Cardinal Casaroli has predictably called ‘objective’, completely invalidate any findings they may eventually reach. One is Philippe de Weck, the former Chairman of UBS Zürich. Le Weck still maintains very close links with the UBS bank. This is the bank which holds on behalf of Licio Gelli, 55 million dollars of the stolen money. It is the bank which holds on behalf of the late Roberto Calvi and Flavio Carboni over 30 million dollars of the stolen money. It is the bank which holds on behalf of Carboni’s Austrian mistress, Manuela Kleinszig, 2 million dollars of the stolen money.

Philippe de Weck is also the man at the centre of what the French call ‘the sniffer planes affair’. This involved a wonderful invention, the brainchild of an Italian technician, Aldo Bonassoli, and Count Alain de Villegas, an elderly Belgian. The invention came in two parts, one housed in a plane which beamed back to the second part on earth cross sections of the geological strata many thousands of feet below the earth’s sufface which were then seen as technical data on a computer screen.

The potential was limitless. Along with instant mineral and oil prospecting at a fraction of the traditional cost, there were also military implications: any eye that could locate oil thousands of feet below the earth’s surface could also pinpoint a submerged nuclear submarine. Encouraged by President Giscard d’Estaing the French oil giant Elf poured about 120 million dollars into the Count’s Panamanian company Fisalma. Villegas was the sole shareholder and the company was administered by Philippe de Weck. By the time the French realized that Le Sting had been played on them, 60 million dollars had vanished. De Weck told the French that the money had gone on research and ‘charitable works’. One of the men acting for UBS Zürich, who had been keeping an eye on this interesting pioneering work in the art of international theft, was Ernst Keller, who at the same time was also a shareholder of Ultrafin AG, a Calvi-owned company linked to Ambrosiano Holding, Luxembourg. Ultrafin was the conduit by which the Count’s Panamanian company received its initial payments.

Another member of the commission is Herman Abs who was head of the Deutsche Bank from 1940 to 1945. The Deutsche Bank was the Nazis’ bank throughout the Second World War. Abs was in effect Hitler’s paymaster. During this period Abs was also on the board of I.G. Farben, the chemical and industrial conglomerate that gave such whole-hearted assistance to Hitler’s war efforts. Abs participated at board meetings of I.G. Farben when members discussed the use of slave labour at a Farben rubber plant located in the Auschwitz concentration camp.

No matter how many ex-bank chairmen or Nazi paymasters the Vatican employs, the truth will not go away. At least one billion dollars of the monies owed to the various banks is the Vatican’s responsibility. It is perhaps the sweetest irony of all that no matter how much or how little it benefited from the phantom companies littered in Panama and elsewhere, it owned the companies when the debts were incurred. In truth it has benefited vastly, but if the banks who are owed
money are really determined to get it back, then there is only one logical course of action: sue the Vatican. More specifically sue the Vatican Bank and Pope John Paul II, for 85 per cent of the profits from the bank go directly to the Pope.

At the time of his death Calvi was, according to subsequent sworn statements made by members of his family, negotiating with Opus Dei, who had agreed to buy the 16 per cent of Banco Ambrosiano that the Vatican owned. If this deal had been completed the 1.3 billion dollar hole would have been filled, Calvi’s empire would have remained intact and Archbishop Paul Marcinkus would have been removed from office. Many, including Marcinkus, objected to that eleventh-hour deliverance from such a quarter.

Now, with Calvi dead, the Vatican has been wrangling with the Italian Government and a consortium representing international banking for nearly two years. Eventually in February 1984 news that agreement had finally been reached began to filter out of the Geneva conference rooms. By mid-May 1984 the details were clear. The international banks will get back approximately two-thirds of the 600 million dollars they had loaned Calvi’s Luxembourg holding company.
Of that some 250 million dollars will be paid by the Vatican Bank.
The Vatican is due to hand over this sum on June 30th, 1984. This payment is being made by the Vatican ‘on the basis of nonculpability’ but ‘in recognition of a moral involvement’. The reader may care to re-study the Vatican denials of any involvement, recorded on page 306, in the light of this impending payment.

The faithful should ignore all appeals that will undoubtedly be made in Roman Catholic churches throughout the world. All the Vatican Bank is doing is repaying a part of the vast amount of money it acquired through the activities of Calvi and Marcinkus. The Vatican Bank has still walked away from the entire affair with millions upon millions of dollars that represent a substantial amount of the still missing monies.

At the time of writing, Archbishop Paul Marcinkus still clings to office. He has been written off many times, yet he still survives. He still hides in the Vatican, fearful of emerging in case of being immediately arrested by the Italian authorities. He has recently appealed to the Italian courts asking for immunity from prosecution. It is to be hoped that before the Italian judiciary consider Marcinkus’s plea they have obtained access to the still secret reports of the negotiations between Italy and Vatican City State. Possibly the most extraordinary information the official reports contain is the revelation that the secret
criminal agreement between Marcinkus and Calvi that occurred in August 1981 was not, as the Vatican would have the world believe, a singular aberration by a kindly Archbishop towards a devout Catholic banker. The evidence now available clearly shows that other illegal and criminal agreements between Marcinkus and Calvi existed. They reach back as far as November 1976. The criminal conspiracy, therefore, began during the reign of Pope Paul VI. These facts serve powerfully to underline what would have occurred if Albino Luciani had lived. Also still hiding within the Vatican are the Archbishop’s colleague and partner in so many crimes, Luigi Mennini. Also hiding in the Vatican is Pelligrino De Strobel. In such a manner does Pope John Paul II preside over his Vatican Bank in May 1984.

While all three remain fugitives from Italian justice, the authorities have sequestered all Italian property belonging to Mennini and de Strobel. All three are wanted by a wide range of Italian authorities in a variety of cities. Yet another colleague who would also have been promptly removed by Luciani if he had lived, Monsignor Donato De Bonis, the secretary of the IOR, is hiding within the Vatican walls from Turin magistrates, who are investigating a billion-dollar tax evasion scandal. De Bonis, who has had his passport withdrawn by the magistrates, continues, like his three colleagues, to work in the Vatican Bank. In such a manner does Pope John Paul II, to whom these men are answerable, preside over his Vatican Bank in May 1984.

Cardinal Ugo Poletti, the Cardinal Vicar of Rome, whom Luciani wished to remove, is another for whom there is ample evidence to illustrate the wisdom of Luciani’s decision. Poletti was responsible for recommending to the then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti that General Raffaele Giudice should be placed in command of the Finance Police. Subsequently P2 member Giudice organized the billion-dollar tax evasion scandal, diverting massive amounts of money to Licio Gelli. In 1983 Cardinal Poletti indignantly denied using any influence to get Giudice his job. The Turin magistrates then showed the Cardinal Vicar of Rome a copy of his letter to Andreotti. Poletti remains Cardinal Vicar of Rome. In such a manner does Pope John Paul II preside over the Roman Catholic Church in May 1984.

The new Concordat recently signed between the Vatican and the Italian Government makes a fitting epitaph for the current Pope’s reign. Italy, for nearly two thousand years regarded by Catholics as the home of their faith, no longer has Roman Catholicism as ‘the religion of the State’. The Church’s privileged position in Italy is ending.

Another change must be bringing a warm smile to the face of Licio
Gelli. The new Canon Law that took effect on November 27th, 1983, has dropped the ruling that Freemasons are subjected to automatic excommunication. The survivors on the list of Vatican Masons that Albino Luciani considered are now safe. The purge that he had planned will not be reactivated by his successor.

As previously recorded, none of Luciani’s proposed changes has been implemented. Vatican Incorporated is still functioning. In all markets.