Michele Sindona

Italian-American banker and adviser who took refuge in the U.S. in 1968 and was indicted in 1979 for a great banking scandal of laundering Vatican funds, with Mafia involvement and as many as ten deaths suspected. He was convicted on 3/18/1986 of contracting a murder by paying $50,000 to an American, William Joseph Arico, to kill Giorgio Ambrosoli who was found dead shortly after midnight on 7/12/1979 Milan, Italy. Two days after his conviction, Sindona was found in an irreversible coma on 3/20/1986 which blood tests confirmed was induced by a lethal dose of cyanide. No one is sure whether it was an attempted murder or a suicide. Italian investigators believed that Sindona could have thrown light on many criminal activities, including the Masonic lodge scandal that brought down an Italian government, the laundering of Mafia money and the death of Roberto Calvi, the managing director of the Banco Ambrosiano. Ambrosoli, appointed by the Bank of Italy to be the liquidator of Sindona's bankrupt Banca Privata Italiana, was fount shot dead in front of his home in Milan, Italy shortly after midnight on 7/12/1979. The hired gunman, Arico, whose confession to U.S. prosecutors helped convict Sindona, died in 1984 in an attempted prison escape. While in the U.S. in 1980, Sindona attempted suicide by slashing his wrists. The attempt came two days before he was sentenced to 25 years in prison for bank fraud in connection with the collapse of the Franklin National Bank. Usually Sindona took his coffee in the presence of the guards, but on Thursday 3/20/1986, 8:20 AM in Voghera prison he drank it in the bathroom and collapsed shortly thereafter. The former financial advisor to the Vatican was brain dead of a lethal dose of cyanide and being kept on life support systems. No brain activity was evident and his heart was deteriorating. Sindona was also a financial advisor to the secret Propaganda 2, (P-2), Masonic Lodge, and a group of prominent Italians accused of criminal activities and right-wing intrigue in Italy and South America. The discovery of the P-2 lodge brought down an Italian government in 1981. Extradited to Italy in late 1984, he was sentenced to 25 years prison in 1986. Link to Wikipedia biography