God's Banker Read Online Free
Author: Rupert Cornwell
a Sicilian tax lawyer who in the 1960s and early 1970s constructed from Milan an empire which spanned the Atlantic. He had the unusual distinction of seeing his Italian and American banks go under virtually simultaneously. Sindona, as we shall discover, plays no small part in the history of Calvi, first as teacher, then partner, and finally as avenging tormentor.
The similarities with the Banca Romana scandal are glaring, but should not be surprising. For the ground rules of the system which provides such periodic abuses have remained much the same, for all the changes that have overtaken Italy in more than a century. The country has passed from liberal monarchy through two decades under Fascism to democratic parliamentary republic, from a heavy dependence on agriculture, to emergence as the world's seventh industrial power and a founder member of the Common Market. But for all the depth and breadth of the transformation, Italy has not acquired an efficient and transparent financial market of comparable depth and breadth.
The stock market where Calvi and Sindona flourished remains tiny, the natural home of speculators and insider trading, despite all recent efforts to improve its appeal. The banks remain the pivot of Italy's financial system. Risk capital, normally provided by the share mar ket, is conspicuous mainly by its absence; to raise money in Italy is to secure a loan from a bank. The banks, however, can in turn be heavily conditioned by the politicians. Even before the Ambrosiano affair, some three-quarters of the Italian banking system were owned by the State. And in many cases the senior posts are politically conditioned appointments, the accepted spoils of power.
In the early postwar years, matters were comparatively simple, as the electoral domination of the Christian Democrat party, much influenced by the Vatican, was assured. On the left, the Socialists and Communists were weakened by the ripples of the cold war beyond Italy's frontiers, and their own differences within them. But from the mid-1950s on a subtle change took place. Although the Communists, despite a gradual climb in their vote, remained disqualified from power, pressures for a change in the formula by which the country was governed steadily grew. For the first time the Christian Democrats began to feel that their hitherto complete sway was threatened. The party moved to increase its control of the banking system and of the constellation of public sector corporations which had contributed much to Italy's postwar "economic miracle". Inevitably, temptations multiplied to use bank funds for mistaken industrial ventures, conceived in good part for reasons of patronage or vote winning.
By the early 1960s, Italy was moving leftward unmistakably. The trend was reflected both in the birth of the "centre-left" formula of government, bringing the Socialists into the arena of power—and in the intensifying struggle for top public sector jobs. The process, as might be expected, reduced the capacity of the State to act as an independent ringmaster. Sometimes it would seem little more than the sum of the various interest groups as they jostled for position. The same jostling also produced the succession of short-lived Governments and frequent "crises", for which Italian politics is best known abroad.
And yet, despite this illusion of instability, the system was, and remains, largely static. The Communists rarely strayed from the sidelines of national power, apart from the three years up to 1979 when, on the strength of their 34 per cent vote in the 1976 general election, they could not be denied a place in the ruling majority, if not in Government itself. Those were the years of "national solidarity", to be brought to an end by a decline in the Communist vote and an increase in East-West tensions abroad.
The governance of Italy returned to a series of brittle alliances between Christian Democrats and Socialists, condemned to the role of freres
The similarities with the Banca Romana scandal are glaring, but should not be surprising. For the ground rules of the system which provides such periodic abuses have remained much the same, for all the changes that have overtaken Italy in more than a century. The country has passed from liberal monarchy through two decades under Fascism to democratic parliamentary republic, from a heavy dependence on agriculture, to emergence as the world's seventh industrial power and a founder member of the Common Market. But for all the depth and breadth of the transformation, Italy has not acquired an efficient and transparent financial market of comparable depth and breadth.
The stock market where Calvi and Sindona flourished remains tiny, the natural home of speculators and insider trading, despite all recent efforts to improve its appeal. The banks remain the pivot of Italy's financial system. Risk capital, normally provided by the share mar ket, is conspicuous mainly by its absence; to raise money in Italy is to secure a loan from a bank. The banks, however, can in turn be heavily conditioned by the politicians. Even before the Ambrosiano affair, some three-quarters of the Italian banking system were owned by the State. And in many cases the senior posts are politically conditioned appointments, the accepted spoils of power.
In the early postwar years, matters were comparatively simple, as the electoral domination of the Christian Democrat party, much influenced by the Vatican, was assured. On the left, the Socialists and Communists were weakened by the ripples of the cold war beyond Italy's frontiers, and their own differences within them. But from the mid-1950s on a subtle change took place. Although the Communists, despite a gradual climb in their vote, remained disqualified from power, pressures for a change in the formula by which the country was governed steadily grew. For the first time the Christian Democrats began to feel that their hitherto complete sway was threatened. The party moved to increase its control of the banking system and of the constellation of public sector corporations which had contributed much to Italy's postwar "economic miracle". Inevitably, temptations multiplied to use bank funds for mistaken industrial ventures, conceived in good part for reasons of patronage or vote winning.
By the early 1960s, Italy was moving leftward unmistakably. The trend was reflected both in the birth of the "centre-left" formula of government, bringing the Socialists into the arena of power—and in the intensifying struggle for top public sector jobs. The process, as might be expected, reduced the capacity of the State to act as an independent ringmaster. Sometimes it would seem little more than the sum of the various interest groups as they jostled for position. The same jostling also produced the succession of short-lived Governments and frequent "crises", for which Italian politics is best known abroad.
And yet, despite this illusion of instability, the system was, and remains, largely static. The Communists rarely strayed from the sidelines of national power, apart from the three years up to 1979 when, on the strength of their 34 per cent vote in the 1976 general election, they could not be denied a place in the ruling majority, if not in Government itself. Those were the years of "national solidarity", to be brought to an end by a decline in the Communist vote and an increase in East-West tensions abroad.
The governance of Italy returned to a series of brittle alliances between Christian Democrats and Socialists, condemned to the role of freres
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