Word: calvi
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Calvi's real problems had begun in 1978, when the Bank of Italy conducted an extensive audit of his financial empire. The examiners noted unorthodox operations and complained that Ambrosiano affiliates were carrying out "all types of operations outside of controls." Ominously enough, the investigators also noted that they could not separate Ambrosiano holdings from Vatican holdings because of the complex interlocking relationships between them...
That audit proved to be inconclusive, but it led to a second, completed earlier this year, that uncovered $1.2 billion in unsecured lending. Calvi was buying up Ambrosiano stock, possibly using money borrowed on international financial markets by Ambrosiano and its subsidiaries, in an attempt to strengthen his grip on the parent bank. During 1978-79 and in 1981, Ambrosiano and its subsidiaries raised about $1.2 billion. In these years the banks lent at least $800 million to low-capitalized shell companies in Panama, Luxembourg and Liechtenstein. The shell companies, in turn, used about $400 million to buy stock...
...Calvi and several colleagues were indicted for illegally exporting $26.4 million in capital from Italy during 1975 and 1976. Calvi was found guilty in July 1981, fined a total of $11.7 million and sentenced to four years in jail. He was released pending appeal...
...While Calvi was being prosecuted for the illegal export of capital, police raided the sumptuous Arezzo villa of Licio Gelli, a Tuscan-born businessman with financial and right-wing political links to South America who served as Grand Master of a Masonic lodge known as Propaganda Due, or P2. Police found Calvi's name, along with those of other prominent Italian and South American politicians, military officers and businessmen (including Sindona), on the secret membership list. P2 was trying to support anti-Communist movements in South America and subvert the Italian state by taking control of its institutions through...
Even as he appealed his four-year jail sentence this summer, Calvi continued to try to make new deals and extricate himself from the hole he had dug. Barely a month after his conviction, in fact, he asked the I.O.R.'s aid as he sought ways to help pay off the outstanding loans made by his shell companies. Though he had been convicted of a financial crime, Calvi was still made welcome at the Vatican bank and other banks. Marcinkus' defense is that he was newly reconfirmed as president of Banco Ambrosiano, and the bank's balance...