29 Facts About Licio Gelli

Licio Gelli was revealed in 1981 as being the Venerable Master of the clandestine Masonic lodge Propaganda Due.

Licio Gelli volunteered for the Blackshirts expeditionary forces sent by Mussolini in support of Francisco Franco's rebellion in the Spanish Civil War.

Licio Gelli served as liaison officer between the Italian government and Nazi Germany, and participated in the Italian Social Republic with Giorgio Almirante, founder of the neofascist Italian Social Movement.

In 1970, in the plans of the failed Golpe Borghese, Licio Gelli was tasked with arresting the Italian President, Giuseppe Saragat.

Licio Gelli publicly declared on repeated occasions that he was a close friend of Peron, although no confirmation ever came from South America.

Licio Gelli affirmed that he introduced Peron to Masonry and that this friendship was of real importance for Italy.

Licio Gelli was named minister plenipotentiary for cultural affairs in the Argentine embassy in Italy, thus providing him with diplomatic immunity.

Licio Gelli had four diplomatic passports issued by Argentina, and has been charged in Argentina with falsification of official documents.

In 1981 Licio Gelli was one of the very few Italians to be invited to President Reagan's oath.

In 1990 a report on RAI Television alleged that the CIA had paid Licio Gelli to instigate terrorist activities in Italy.

Licio Gelli's downfall started with the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, which led to a 1981 police raid on his villa and the discovery of the P2 covert lodge.

Licio Gelli was then known as the founder and owner of "Canale 5" TV channel, and was listed as a member of P2.

Licio Gelli was expelled from GOI freemasonry on 31 October 1981, and the P2 scandal provoked the fall of Arnaldo Forlani's cabinet in June 1981.

In 1984 Jorge Vargas, the secretary general of the Union Nacionalista de Chile and a former member of the Movimiento Revolucionario Nacional Sindicalista, declared to La Tercera de la Hora that Licio Gelli was then in Pinochet's Chile.

Finally, in 1987, Licio Gelli secretly came back to Switzerland in the car of his lawyer Marc Bonnant and surrendered in Geneva to investigative judge Jean-Pierre Trembley.

Licio Gelli was wanted in connection with the 1982 collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano and on charges of subversive association in connection with the 1980 Bologna railway station bombing, which killed 85 people.

Licio Gelli was sentenced to two months in prison in Switzerland, while an Italian court in Florence sentenced him on 15 December 1987, in absentia, to eight years in prison on charges of financing right-wing terrorist activity in Tuscany in the 1970s.

Licio Gelli had already been sentenced in absentia to 14 months in jail by a court in San Remo for illegally exporting money from Italy.

Licio Gelli then disappeared on the eve of being imprisoned, in May 1998, while being under house arrest in his mansion near Arezzo.

Licio Gelli's disappearance was strongly suspected to be the result of being forewarned.

Two motions of no confidence were made by the right-wing opposition, against the Justice Minister, Giovanni Maria Flick, and the Interior Minister, Giorgio Napolitano, stating that Licio Gelli had benefited from accomplices helping him in his escape.

On 19 July 2005 Licio Gelli was formally indicted by Roman Magistrates for the murder of Roberto Calvi, along with former Mafia boss Giuseppe Calo, businessmen Ernesto Diotallevi and Flavio Carboni, and the latter's girlfriend, Manuela Kleinszig.

Licio Gelli was accused of having provoked Calvi's death in order to punish him for having embezzled money owed to him and the Mafia.

Licio Gelli's name was not in the final indictment at the trial that started in October 2005, and the other accused were eventually acquitted due to "insufficient evidence", though by the time of these acquittals in June 2007, the prosecutor's office in Rome had opened a second investigation implicating Licio Gelli, among others.

Licio Gelli has been implicated in Aldo Moro's murder, since the Italian chief of intelligence, accused of negligence, was a piduista.

In 1996, Licio Gelli was nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature, supported by Mother Teresa and Naguib Mahfouz.

In 2003 Licio Gelli told La Repubblica that it seemed that the P2 "democratic rebirth plan" was being implemented by Silvio Berlusconi:.

On 15 December 2015 Licio Gelli died in Arezzo, Tuscany, aged 96.

On 11 February 2006, Licio Gelli donated his "non-secret archive" to the State Archives of Pistoia, as part of an official ceremony, held under the patronage of the Municipality.