P2 grand master Licio Gelli indicted over Calvi murder

[evermind]

Reported yesterday in the Washington Times and the (UK) Independent.

The previously accepted story of a suicide by Calvi, who was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London, was discredited by British forensic experts who last year "determined that Calvi could not have climbed to a scaffold under the bridge", where he supposedly hung himself, unaided. (From the story at http://ansa.it/main/notizie/awnplus/english/news/2005-07-19_794573.html )

Which goes to show that "conspiracy theorists" sometimes do get it right. Widespread speculation that it was a murder, and about Gelli, P2 and Mafia involvement have been dismissed under the "conspiracy theory" banner for more than a decade since the incident took place.


From the Independent story Mason indicted over murder of 'God's banker':

Mr Gelli denies he was involved but has acknowledged that the financier, known as "God's banker" because of his links with the Vatican, was murdered. He said the killing was commissioned in Poland.

This is thought to be a reference to Calvi's alleged involvement in financing the Solidarity trade union movement at the request of the late Pope John Paul II, according to the sources quoted by La Repubblica newspaper.

Two Roman investigating magistrates, Judge Maria Monteleone and Judge Luca Tescaroli, sent Mr Gelli a judicial letter informing him that he is formally under investigation on charges of ordering the murder along with four other people - Flavio Carboni, a shadowy businessman with secret service contacts, his girlfriend Manuela Kleinsing, the Cosa Nostra boss Giuseppe Calo and an entrepreneur, Ernesto Dioatallevi. The four other suspects were indicted on murder charges in April and are to stand trial in October.

Investigators believe that Calvi was murdered as "punishment" for having used his position as head of the Banco Ambrosiano, then Italy's largest private bank, to seize large sums of money belonging to the Sicilian Mafia and to Mr Gelli.

Sorry if this has been posted here already, I didn't see it.

[wli]

1. now when are they going to blab about CIA "control links"?

The first Gladio/P2 stuff that came out talked about the US/CIA crud involved in their "state-sponsored terrorism" shenanigan, now they just need to actually say what was going on. The entire point behind all this is how PO'd Italy is about the US subverting their democratic processes.

[choie]

2. educate

could you kindly educate me - what is the P2?

[wli]

3. Look for "Gladio" and "stay behind armies"

They were originally intended to resist Communist invasions after WWII, and turned into US/NATO-sponsored terrorist networks intended to sway the political climate to the right and prevent Communists from being voted into power. They're responsible for terrorist acts falsely attributed to the "Red Brigade" and some other left-wing political organizations, and possibly the assassination of Aldo Moro. The recent abduction of Abu Omar is thought to be their handiwork as well (and the first time I'd ever heard of Gladio was in that context).

[evermind]

4. Wikipedia has the basics, see inside

From wikipedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_Due

(reproduced in full under their license at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights )

P2 is the common name for the Italian Freemasonic lodge, Propaganda Due (Italian: Propaganda Two).

It became the target of considerable attention in the wake of the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano (one of Milan's principal banks), and the suspicious 1982 death of its president Roberto Calvi in London, initially ruled a suicide but later prosecuted as a murder.

The lodge was founded in 1877 as a Lodge for visiting members unable to attend their own Lodges. In the mid 1960s it only had 14 permanent members, but when Licio Gelli took over he rapidly expanded the membership to over 1000 within a year.

Calvi's connections with the Worshipful Master Licio Gelli became a particular focus of press and police attention, and caused the lodge (then secret) to be discovered. A list of adherents was found by the police in Gelli's house in Arezzo in march 1981, containing over 900 names, among which were very important state officers, a few politicians, and a number of military officers, many of them enrolled in the Italian secret services. Notably, the current Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was on the list, although he had not yet entered elective politics at the time. Another famous member was Victor Emmanuel, Prince of Naples, the current head of the House of Savoy. A document was also found in the possession of Licio Gelli titled "Piano di Rinascita Democratica" (Democratic Rebirth Plan) which amounted to a declaration of the lodge's intent; essentially, Gelli's objectives were to form a new political and economical elite to lead Italy towards a more authoritarian form of democracy, in an anti-communist perspective.

It is alleged that the P2 lodge was responsible for the 'Italicus' train bombing of 1974, in which 12 people were killed.

Then-prime minister Arnaldo Forlani was forced to resign, and Giovanni Spadolini of the Republican Party (PRI) was then appointed, leading a center-left coalition. Spadolini was the first Italian prime minister not belonging to the Democrazia Cristiana ("Christian Democrats") party.

The lodge was then examined by a special commission of the Italian Parliament, directed by Tina Anselmi of the Democrazia Cristiana. The conclusion of the commission was that it was a secret criminal organization, even if no proof was found of specific crimes committed. Allegations of surreptitious international relationships, mainly with Argentina (Gelli repeatedly suggested he was a close friend of Juan Peron) and with some people suspected of belonging to the American Central Intelligence Agency were also partly confirmed; but soon a political debate overtook the legal level of the analysis.

Even if outlawed by Mussolini in 1925, masonic institutions have always been tolerated in Italy, but a special law was issued that prohibited secret lodges; the Grande Oriente d'Italia ("Grand Orient of Italy"), after taking disciplinary action against members with P2 connections, distanced itself from Gelli's lodge and claimed to only have respect for honest Freemasons. Other laws introduced a prohibition on membership in such organizations for some categories of state officers (especially military officers). Such laws have been recently questioned by the European Court of Human Rights.

It has been repeatedly alleged that P2 was involved in the assassination of Aldo Moro, murdered by the Red Brigades, after the Italian Security Services refused to strike a deal with the abductors, but no concrete proof was ever found. It has also been suspected that P2 was involved in the 1980 bombing of a train station in Bologna as part of the strategy of tension and that they tried to frame extreme Italian nationalist groups.

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

5. ooh this certainly deserves a kick

[emad]

6. The Polish Catholic order The Marian Fathers were directly

linked to the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano which Calvi ran.

For many years UK mainland terrorist crimes attributed to the IRA, the Provisional IRA and assorted Irish fanatics were commissioned, financed, masterminded and executed by the Marians who 'front' was a boys' Catholic boarding school at Henley on Thames, Oxfordshire.

Other front businesses they ran included a childrens' orphanage and an old people's home.

Twice in the 1960s and 70s they were busted for child sex crimes. When they were sued in the UK lawcourts by distraught parents they became bankrupted after being fined swingeing fines for knowingly allowing child sex abuse to flourish in their establishments.

When Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in 1982, a forensic paper trail started by lawyers trying to recover court fines on behalf of their successful litigant clients were appalled to find that the Marians had already emptied their coffers and had no way of settling their debts.

What they had done was to steal a massive investment portfolio of a wealthy meember of the British aristocracy and then raise loans on it, including c=mortgages on a swathe of properties valued in the early 1980s at around £200million.

That portfolio had been laundered via Banco Ambrosiano straight into the Vatican Bank where Cardinal Marcinkus was in charge of financial policy and investments.

When the CIA investigated the Ambrosiano collapse, marcinkus fled to the US.

Eventually Bush Sr have him immunity from prosecution because the death of Ambrosiano's CEO Roberto Calvi was "clearly a case of suicide".............

Marcinkus is still sitting pretty and living rent free in Arizona as a result....

[emad]

7. Lawsuit accuses Vatican Bank in World War II crimes:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=132&topic_id=1915544