Licio Gelli

Licio Gelli (born April 21, 1919 in Pistoia , † December 15, 2015 in Arezzo ) was an Italian entrepreneur , fascist and conspirator. Gelli was involved in numerous scandals in Italy . He was involved in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano , a bank that was majority owned by the Vatican Bank . Gelli was accused of participating in several terrorist acts. Among other things, the bomb attack on the Bologna train station and the kidnapping and murder of the Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro . He was master of the chair of the highly influential Italian Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due , which was dissolved in 1982 , until he and the Lodge were expelled from Freemasonry in 1976 . Gelli was also a member of the Order of Malta and the Order of Knights of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem .

Life

During fascism , Licio Gelli volunteered for the Black Shirts  - a militia that Mussolini sent to Spain to fight alongside Franco in the civil war. Later Gelli became a liaison officer of the "Black Shirts" line to Nazi Germany with contacts to Hermann Göring .

After the Second World War, Gelli worked as a salesman for the mattress company Permaflex . Later he founded his own import-export company. It is believed that Gelli worked for the CIA after the war . He worked in Argentina for many years because he feared arrest by the Italian authorities for his activities during fascism. In self-chosen exile, he established close relationships with the generals who were to establish a military dictatorship in this South American country in 1976. In 1970 he was again primarily active in Italy and in 1971 took over the chairmanship of the Masonic lodge Propaganda Due . Together with other members, Gelli took power in the Banco Ambrosiano.

In 1981, during a search of his villa in Arezzo, a list of the names of numerous military officers, politicians and public figures, including famous mayors of Italy, who were involved in the secret box Propaganda Due , was discovered. These included the names of over 900 government officials, industrialists (including the later Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi ), journalists and leading bankers (such as Michele Sindona and Roberto Calvi ) as well as the head of the former royal family, Victor Emanuel of Savoy . The discovery of the list led to a national scandal because numerous offices in the Italian Republic were held by followers of Gelli's. During the house search, a document with the name “Plan for Democratic Rebirth” was found. The plan envisaged that through control of the parties, the courts and the press, Italy would be transformed into a right-wing dictatorship in the event that the communists and their allies won the elections in Italy.

In 1981 his Masonic Lodge was banned. Gelli fled to Switzerland. On September 13, 1982, Gelli was arrested in Geneva after attempting to withdraw money from a Swiss bank account with a forged Argentine passport . Shortly before the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano bank, Gelli had deposited CHF 120 million from that bank in his account in Geneva. Gelli was arrested. In 1983 Switzerland agreed to extradite Gelli to Italy. But shortly before extradition, on August 19, 1983, Gelli escaped from the Champ-Dollon prison in Geneva with the help of prison guards. Gelli went into hiding. Four years later, Gelli surrendered to the Swiss authorities. He was arrested. Preliminary proceedings against Gelli had already been initiated in Italy in 1980. On November 23, 1995, Gelli was finally convicted of misleading the investigation into the terrorist attack on the Bologna train station in 1980. A direct involvement could not be proven. He was also convicted in 1982 for his involvement in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. The Mafia had used the bank to launder funds. Gelli was accused of helping the mafia. Gelli was convicted of fraudulent bankruptcy. In 1998 the police found gold bars with a total weight of 165 kilos buried in the garden of his villa.

In September 1987, Gelli was extradited from Switzerland to Italy and tried for terrorist bombings, but was acquitted. A few years after the P2 scandal, suspicions were raised that Gelli was implicated in the murder of the Milanese banker Roberto Calvi (also known as "Banker of God"), who had been in custody for the collapse of his Banco Ambrosiano and was later hanged at the London office Blackfriars Bridge had been found.

In his last years Gelli, who suffered from a weak heart, devoted himself increasingly to writing. He last lived in Arezzo; there he served since 1998 a sentence converted into house arrest. On October 10, 2013, his villa was confiscated by the tax authorities due to a tax offense .

Gelli died on December 15, 2015 at the age of 96 in his Arezzo home.

Movie

• Licio Gelli was obviously the model for the character of Don Licio Lucchesi in the 1990 film The Godfather - Part III .
• In December 2007 Licio Gelli signed a contract for the rights to his biography with the New York producer Gabor Harrach. The film with the working title "Conspirator" was not made.

literature

• Heribert Blondiau, Udo Gümpel: The Vatican justifies the means: murder of God's banker . Patmos, Düsseldorf 2002, ISBN 3-491-72417-1 .
• Giuseppe D'Alema: The resilient rise of Lodge P2 . Edition X, Reinheim 1984, ISBN 3-921-77405-5 .
• Alessandro Silj: Crime, Politics, Democracy in Italy . Suhrkamp, ​​Frankfurt am Main 1998, ISBN 3-518-11911-7 .
• Alexander Stille: The Judges: Death, the Mafia and the Italian Republic . CH Beck, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-406-42303-5 .

Web links

Commons : Licio Gelli  - Collection of Images

Individual evidence

1. ↑ tagblatt.ch Italy's right-wing puppeteer is dead ... traces of the murder of Aldo Moro
2. ^ The Suitcase Scandalo. Newsweek. 1981-06-08.
3. ↑ spiegel.de Fascist secret alliance Gelli is dead
4. ↑ tagblatt.ch ROM. The paper, discovered in 1981 in Licio Gelli's villa near Arezzo, was entitled “Plan for a Democratic Rebirth”. But the exact opposite was planned.
5. ↑ How Licio Gelli fooled Switzerland NZZ, December 16, 2015 (accessed on May 28, 2019)
6. ↑ Bote ex-Masonic boss Licio Gelli is dead
7. ↑ tagblatt.ch The death of «God's banker»
8. ↑ letemps.ch Mort de Licio Gelli, figure rayonnante et trouble d'une certaine Italie
9. ↑ Licio Gelli: Ex-Masonic Grand Master is dead. Spiegel Online , December 16, 2015, accessed on September 21, 2017 . 
10. ^ Licio Gelli, al centro di innumerevoli casi giudiziari. In: repubblica.it. La Repubblica , December 16, 2015, accessed December 16, 2015 (Italian).