Word: sindona
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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Only four men were even aware of the secret nocturnal meetings last spring in the Vatican's baroque Apostolic Palace. Two were top cardinals in the church hierarchy. Two were key participants: Pope Paul VI and Michele Sindona, the tough Sicilian lawyer who in two decades has risen from obscurity to eminence as a financier and industrialist. It is almost unheard of for a Pope personally to conduct the church's business affairs, but this was no ordinary occasion. Sindona and Pope Paul closed a deal that started a shift of profound consequence in the Holy...
...Vatican sold Sindona the bulk of its 15% interest in Italy's largest real estate firm, Società Generale Immobiliare (assets: $175 million), which has not only dotted postwar Italian cities with tower apartments but erected similar projects in Montreal, Mexico City and Washington, D.C., including the capital's most In address, Watergate. When word of the sale leaked out, jitters swept the Milan stock market; brokers feared that a liquidation of Vatican securities holdings might depress stock prices generally. Italian newspapers speculated that the Vatican was pulling its money out of Italy to avoid paying a dividend...
Organizing a Liechtenstein holding company called Fasco, A. G., Sindona used profits he had made in real estate to buy a small Italian construction company. He hired American technicians to run the firm, won contracts across Europe and the Middle East. Eventually he sold 60% of the company to Belgians and moved on to new ventures in Britain, France, Switzerland...
...Sindona, a soft-spoken executive who relaxes by reading Tolstoy and collects Renaissance art, runs such distant acquisitions through aides who have sweeping authority. He insists that his companies increase overseas activities to spread their own risk, points proudly to the fact that by so doing, Libby last year raised sales 5% to $289 million and tripled earnings...
Contact Man. Sindona is now president of seven companies, vice president of three and a director of twelve others. Along with protecting him against the winds of misfortune at home, his international complex has another purpose. Sindona is a dedicated free trader, believes businessmen can achieve tariff reductions faster than diplomats. "When enough European companies have interests in the U.S. and enough American companies have interests in firms in Europe," he says, "nobody will want to keep trade barriers up." To speed their fall, Sindona volunteers his services as a contact man and consultant without fee whenever he notices Italian...