17 Facts About Michele Sindona

Michele Sindona was a member of the fascist Propaganda Due, a secret Masonic lodge of the Grand Orient of Italy.

Michele Sindona was fatally poisoned in prison while serving a life sentence for the murder of lawyer Giorgio Ambrosoli.

Michele Sindona graduated with a law degree from the University of Messina in 1942.

Michele Sindona began working in smuggling operations with the Mafia transporting food in trucks.

At the beginning of the 1950s, Michele Sindona moved from Sicily to Milan, Northern Italy where he worked as a tax lawyer for rich Italians wanting to avoid paying taxes.

Michele Sindona was an accountant for companies such as Societa Generale Immobiliare and SNIA Viscosa.

Michele Sindona's dexterity transferring money to Switzerland and Liechtenstein to avoid taxation soon became known to Mafia bosses.

At the beginning of the 1960s, Michele Sindona was a friend of Giovanni Battista Montini, at the time archbishop of the Archdiocese of Milan and Cardinal.

In 1964 Michele Sindona made a deal with a London banker with the newly-introduced offshore Eurodollar.

Michele Sindona was hailed as "the saviour of the lira" and was named "Man of the Year" in January 1974 by the US ambassador to Italy, John Volpe.

Michele Sindona became a member of the fascist Propaganda Due, a secret Masonic lodge of the Grand Orient of Italy.

On 11 July 1979, Giorgio Ambrosoli, the lawyer who was commissioned as liquidator of Michele Sindona's banks, was murdered in Milan by three Mafia hitmen commissioned by Michele Sindona.

Michele Sindona feared that Ambrosoli would expose his manipulations in the Banca Privata Italiana case.

In 1980, Michele Sindona was convicted in the United States of 65 charges, including fraud, perjury, false bank statements and embezzlement of bank funds; his defence was provided by one of the leading American lawyers, Ivan Fisher.

On 16 March 1985, in the trial for the bankruptcy of Banca Privata Italiana, Michele Sindona was sentenced to 12 years in prison for the crime of fraudulent bankruptcy.

The compensation for the damages was established in civil court; Michele Sindona was sentenced to immediately pay a provisional amount of two billion lire to the liquidators of the bank and to the small shareholders who had filed a civil action lawsuit.

Two days after his life sentence, Michele Sindona drank a potassium cyanide coffee in the Voghera prison; he died in the Voghera hospital after two days in a coma, on 22 March 1986.