Michele Sindona

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Michele Sindona (born May 8, 1920 in Patti , metropolitan city Messina , Italy , † March 22, 1986 in Voghera , Pavia province , Italy) was an Italian lawyer and banker .

Life

Michele Sindona grew up in poor conditions in Patti, Sicily , then studied law and worked as a lawyer for northern Italian companies in Milan . His southern Italian origins made it very difficult for him to gain a foothold in the northern Italian establishment in the first few years.

He later founded a number of private equity firms and an initially very successful investment bank in northern Italy. With his business endeavors, he came into competition with the first and leading modern investment bank in Italy, Mediobanca , headed by Enrico Cuccia . He called his banks, which he then merged, Banca Privata Italiana . With the takeover of the English-language Roman The Daily American , he acquired his own newspaper.

In the years of his success, the London Times referred to him as the Howard Hughes of Italy , and US magazine Time even thought that Sindona was the most successful Italian since Mussolini .

His goal of starting a large holding company with many companies failed as he ran into financial difficulties and subsequently went bankrupt .

His arrest in the course of the bankruptcy of his Franklin National Bank in New York City and the subsequent bankruptcy of his Banca Privata Italiana triggered a series of investigations, as a result of which the connections of banking institutions as well as the Vatican , the Sicilian Mafia , the Freemason Lodge Propaganda Due and other groups came to light. Sindona had previously been considered a financial juggler and banker for the Mafia in financial circles. The Banco Ambrosiano with its boss Roberto Calvi was in this network z. Sometimes illegal entanglements are also deeply involved. Sindona's attempt to fake kidnapping by left-wing terrorist groups with the help of the mafia and parts of the Sicilian Freemasons failed.

Sindona was subsequently extradited to Italy, where he was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 1984 for the assignment to murder Giorgio Ambrosoli. Ambrosoli, the liquidator of Sindona's banks, was murdered in July 1979 in Milan by an American hit man .

After giving four interviews to reporter Nick Tosches between 1985 and 1986, he died of cyanide poisoning in Voghera maximum security prison . A perpetrator could not be identified, nor could suicide be excluded.

See also

literature

Web links

Footnotes and sources

  1. ↑ a b Mediator between worlds. In: Spiegel online. September 18, 1972, accessed September 21, 2011.
personal data
SURNAME Sindona, Michele
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian lawyer and banker
DATE OF BIRTH May 8, 1920
PLACE OF BIRTH Patti , metropolitan city of Messina , Italy
DATE OF DEATH March 22, 1986
Place of death Voghera , Province of Pavia Italy