Word: cagliari
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Umberto Eco derides his country for staging formal religious services for two public figures who recently took their lives. Deeply involved in the scandals coming to light, Gardini and Cagliari had little chance of salvaging any part of their professional lives...
...irony of the Gardini and Cagliari funerals is not in the pagan association with honor, but in the religious character of the services. The Christianized West has long condemned suicide.. In antithesis to the pagan heroic ideal, the act is associated with a great evil, something more awful even the taking another's life; it is the single irrevocable sin. Yet Gardini becomes a victim, and Cagliari as well, both assassinated by politics...
Even so, prosecutors may never know the full story, because Gardini could have taken many of the secrets of Enimont to the grave. Nor will they get much help from the other major party to the scheme, Gabriele Cagliari, the former head of Italy's huge energy conglomerate ENI. Just three days before Gardini's death, Cagliari chose to tie a plastic bag over his head with a shoelace before telling investigators all he knew. Prosecutors believe that Gardini and his associates were responsible for the falsification of company books and sophisticated financial fraud, besides the payment of millions...
From there Gardini masterminded Ferruzzi-Montedison's 1989 joint venture with ENI, which made him a global giant -- and began his downfall. From the start, there were rumors that kickbacks had been paid to political parties in return for approving the deal. Gardini soon found himself in conflict with Cagliari, ENI's ambitious chief. Each man controlled 40% of Enimont, but the Ferruzzi boss tried to tip the balance by having friends purchase a majority of the outstanding 20% stock. In the end Cagliari prevailed, and in November 1990 ENI bought out Gardini's stake at an apparently politically sanctioned...
Aware that his former partner Cagliari killed himself after being told he could not leave jail while the investigation into his misdeeds proceeded, Gardini apparently decided not to endure a similar imprisonment. "He was a fighter and he had tremendous pride," says one of his friends, author and columnist Enzo Biagi. "Most of all he valued his freedom." On the morning of July 23 Gardini woke at 7 a.m., took a shower and scanned the newspaper headlines. One read: GAROFANO ACCUSES GARDINI. Next to the bed where he killed himself, he left a one-word note to his family...