Word: calvi
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Noting the pending investigations, Marcinkus has declined to discuss the Ambrosiano affair in detail. After contacts with top Vatican officials and conversations with Marcinkus, TIME Correspondent Wilton Wynn reports that the Vatican claims its relationship with Calvi and Banco Ambrosiano involved only normal banking operations. As for Marcinkus, he is still at his Vatican bank post, expressing confidence that the storm will pass. Says he: "The old archbishop is tranquil. His conscience is clear...
Whether Marcinkus has good reason for such tranquillity may not be immediately known. The investigation to determine just what Calvi did with the huge sums his banks borrowed and to figure out who is liable for the losses that resulted is likely to last for weeks. But the outlines of the scandal have already begun to emerge...
...Calvi began spinning his web in 1971, shortly after he became director-general of Banco Ambrosiano. An employee of the bank for 24 years, Calvi was determined to transform it into a major international financial institution from a relatively small regional bank with strong religious overtones (until ten years ago, would-be shareholders had to present baptismal certificates to prove their Catholicism). One of his initial steps was to form a Luxembourg holding company, Compendium, which later became Banco Ambrosiano Holding. The advantage of a foreign subsidiary: it is not subject to Italy's banking regulations. Calvi...
Under local laws, the Panamanian firms could be started with as little as $10,000 in capital, but could be used to borrow far greater sums on world financial markets. Calvi launched at least a dozen such "shell" companies in Panama, listing employees of his Bahamas bank, including the switchboard operator, as directors and officers...
...Vergil who first guided Calvi through the descending circles of these and other transactions was Michele Sindona. A onetime Italian financier and Vatican financial adviser, he is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence for fraud in connection with the 1974 collapse of New York's Franklin National Bank (see box). Sindona became connected with the Vatican in the mid-1960s and later helped Pope Paul VI divest the church of its holdings in several large companies...