God's Banker Read Online Free Page A
Author: Rupert Cornwell
ennemis ; obliged to co-operate, yet the keenest of rivals. Genuine political alternation, as in Britain and now France, where today's opposition may be tomorrow's Government, still requires that the Communists, the largest party of the Left, be recognized as an acceptable partner in Government.
Thus the threat of a spring-clean by one's political opponent, that most potent of checks and balances, does not obtain in Italy. The system has grown in upon itself, with little prospect that abuses will be rooted out. The Christian Democrats and Socialists, safe in the knowledge that their position in Government will be undisturbed, have split into factions competing as much against each other as against the theoretical Communist opposition. These factions and cliques, the natural descendants of the city states, communes, duchies and kingdoms which fought through much of Italy's earlier history, have found their new battleground in the banks and other appendages of the State.
Ambrosiano was the ultimate example of what could go wrong with the system at large. It was a mutant child of an imperfect financial structure, of the political parties' unquenchable thirst for money, of the secret ramifications and connivances of a distorted state, of the unresolved relations between Italy and the tiny sovereign state of the Vatican, planted in the heart of its capital.
But the Ambrosiano affair was more than a monumental swindle. In its way, and for at least two reasons, it was a tragedy. The first consists of the remorselessness with which events unfolded, and the powerlessness of those in authority to prevent, or even mitigate, final disaster. The second element of tragedy is the central character himself. The Roberto Calvi who emerges from these pages is not the conventional stereotype of the financial rogue; urbane, sophisticated and charming. True, Calvi was a skilled and unprincipled manipulator, able to exert a spell over many who should have known better. But if his fraud was on an epic scale, he himself appears to have been in many respects a most ordinary and unimpressive man.
It is in some ways a secondary consideration whether Calvi was murdered or whether he committed suicide. The gods had been satisfied, and vengeance was complete. One of those with whom the author spoke argued that the full truth would never come out—or that if it were to, at least half a dozen trained investigators, with money and time without limit, should be assigned to the task. That, obviously, has been impossible. But what follows is an imperfect attempt to tell this remarkable, but happily far from representative, Italian tale.
CHAPTER TWO The Beginning
It all started , as it would end 86 years afterwards, with the priests. Or rather a priest. Little is known of Monsignor Giuseppe Tovini other than the considerable imprint he has left on the Italian banking system. But whatever his spiritual qualities, he was surely a most resourceful and enterprising figure.
In the late 1880s he led a group of Catholics to set up Banca San Paolo in Brescia, the industrial city today just an hour's drive east by motorway from Milan. Indeed, to this day Brescia remains the strongest "provincial" rival of Milan within the prosperous region of Lombardy, the heart of industrial and commercial Northern Italy. Then, in 1896, Tovini transferred his financial ambitions westward to the metropolis itself.
There, on August 27 of that year, and with the blessing of Cardinal Andrea Ferrari, archbishop of Milan since 1894, he founded Banco Ambrosiano. Tovini persuaded more than 150 devout Catholics of the city to put up the 1 million lire which constituted the initial capital of Ambrosiano. He himself would be its first chairman. Curiously— yet with deliberate point—the man chosen in another August 86 years later to be the first chairman of the Nuovo Banco Ambrosiano was to be the deputy head of San Paolo di Brescia. The province had had its revenge at
Thus the threat of a spring-clean by one's political opponent, that most potent of checks and balances, does not obtain in Italy. The system has grown in upon itself, with little prospect that abuses will be rooted out. The Christian Democrats and Socialists, safe in the knowledge that their position in Government will be undisturbed, have split into factions competing as much against each other as against the theoretical Communist opposition. These factions and cliques, the natural descendants of the city states, communes, duchies and kingdoms which fought through much of Italy's earlier history, have found their new battleground in the banks and other appendages of the State.
Ambrosiano was the ultimate example of what could go wrong with the system at large. It was a mutant child of an imperfect financial structure, of the political parties' unquenchable thirst for money, of the secret ramifications and connivances of a distorted state, of the unresolved relations between Italy and the tiny sovereign state of the Vatican, planted in the heart of its capital.
But the Ambrosiano affair was more than a monumental swindle. In its way, and for at least two reasons, it was a tragedy. The first consists of the remorselessness with which events unfolded, and the powerlessness of those in authority to prevent, or even mitigate, final disaster. The second element of tragedy is the central character himself. The Roberto Calvi who emerges from these pages is not the conventional stereotype of the financial rogue; urbane, sophisticated and charming. True, Calvi was a skilled and unprincipled manipulator, able to exert a spell over many who should have known better. But if his fraud was on an epic scale, he himself appears to have been in many respects a most ordinary and unimpressive man.
It is in some ways a secondary consideration whether Calvi was murdered or whether he committed suicide. The gods had been satisfied, and vengeance was complete. One of those with whom the author spoke argued that the full truth would never come out—or that if it were to, at least half a dozen trained investigators, with money and time without limit, should be assigned to the task. That, obviously, has been impossible. But what follows is an imperfect attempt to tell this remarkable, but happily far from representative, Italian tale.
CHAPTER TWO The Beginning
It all started , as it would end 86 years afterwards, with the priests. Or rather a priest. Little is known of Monsignor Giuseppe Tovini other than the considerable imprint he has left on the Italian banking system. But whatever his spiritual qualities, he was surely a most resourceful and enterprising figure.
In the late 1880s he led a group of Catholics to set up Banca San Paolo in Brescia, the industrial city today just an hour's drive east by motorway from Milan. Indeed, to this day Brescia remains the strongest "provincial" rival of Milan within the prosperous region of Lombardy, the heart of industrial and commercial Northern Italy. Then, in 1896, Tovini transferred his financial ambitions westward to the metropolis itself.
There, on August 27 of that year, and with the blessing of Cardinal Andrea Ferrari, archbishop of Milan since 1894, he founded Banco Ambrosiano. Tovini persuaded more than 150 devout Catholics of the city to put up the 1 million lire which constituted the initial capital of Ambrosiano. He himself would be its first chairman. Curiously— yet with deliberate point—the man chosen in another August 86 years later to be the first chairman of the Nuovo Banco Ambrosiano was to be the deputy head of San Paolo di Brescia. The province had had its revenge at
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