Word: gelli
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...Argentine citizen named Bruno Rizzi. He turned up one day last week at a Geneva branch of the prestigious Bank of Switzerland to withdraw money - as much as $60 million, according to some reports - from numbered accounts. But Swiss police swiftly arrested him. His real identity: Licio Gelli, 63, an Italian businessman sought for 16 months for his part in two of the biggest scandals to rock Italy in years...
...Gelli, who held dual Italian-Argentine citizenship, had been on the run since last year after a police raid on his luxurious villa in Arezzo, 130 miles north of Rome. There, they discovered, the financier also served as "venerable master" of a bizarre Masonic lodge known as Propaganda Due, or P2. Its membership of nearly 1,000 included powerful Italian politicians, military men and police. The fact that Gelli was apparently using the lodge to achieve political power in Italy unleashed such a furor that high military and security officials whose names were found on the rolls were forced...
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...
...What, if any, was the extent of church officials' knowledge of P2? Lodge Grand Master Licio Gelli, who has gone into hiding, was a business associate of Calvi's. Sindona claims that Gelli had long championed the practice of funding opponents of Communism in order to help the cause of Catholicism, and that Calvi was the paymaster for Gelli's activities...
Colonel Luciano Rossi of the Treasury Police shot and killed himself June 5 after accusations that he had passed state secrets to Gelli. The next day, onetime Minister of Foreign Trade Gaetano Stammati was admitted under an assumed name to a Milan hospital after suffering a heart attack. Listed as a lodge member, Stammati had been questioned about huge pay offs on oil deals with Saudi Arabia. Rome magistrates have so far advised 260 officials on the P2 list that they are being investigated. Fifteen of Italy's top generals and admirals have "gone on vacation," a euphemism...