Word: sindona
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...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...
...Sindona introduced Calvi to Marcinkus. Sindona and Calvi hoped to use Marcinkus for their own purposes, and the bankers and the churchman obviously found it advantageous to do business together. Although the Vatican bank denies it had much to do with either Sindona or Calvi, the I.O.R. eventually became Banco Ambrosiano's fourth-largest stockholder, acquiring over the years at least 794,390 shares, or 1.589% of the bank's stock. A few months after Sindona and Calvi set up the Bahamian bank in 1971, a "Mr. Paul Marcinkus" was listed as a director. "We used his name...
What the I.O.R. may have obtained in return remains to be learned. But according to Sindona, the Vatican bank initially received 2.5% of the Bahamian bank's stock. Vatican officials told TIME that the stake in the Bahamian bank eventually rose to 8% and that the church's interest in Banco Ambrosiano Holding in Luxembourg...
...I.O.R., according to Sindona, regularly moved funds out of the country for Banco Ambrosiano, which was restricted from acting on its own by Italian law. Sindona also asserts that in return for such favors, Calvi's banks paid the I.O.R. an interest rate on its deposits that was one percentage point higher than the rate other customers received. Vatican officials flatly deny that the I.O.R. ever helped transfer funds abroad for Italians...
...seek advice on ways to invest this new cash, the IOR called on its lay financiers, like Michele Sindona, who urged the Pope's bank to invest in many of his deals. When Sindona's empire collapsed in 1974 with the failure of New York's Sin National Bank, the Vatican lost an estimated $70 million. Sin dona is serving a 25-year prison sentence...