A middle class hero: thinking about the recent history of my country (Italy)

The history of my country (Italy) is a very long history in time, full of interesting stories to knows and to share. At school, every little one study our history starting to the Etruscan civilization flourished around the 800 BC in the center of Italy. My teacher said to us that to study history is aays an important thing, because we can learn so much from our past. It's true, we can learn so much knowing our past and I think it's important to know our ancient history as our recent history and because of this  today I want to talk to you about a story of the recent history of Italy: the story of a "middle class hero" during one of the wrost fact of our recent past.

In these days I'm thinking about the recent facts of our history more than usual because the Election Day in Italy will be in the March 4. As you can understand, on the streets and on the social medial many italians are involved to talk about it. The atmosphere is not so quiet, I think because we have never learn to respect the different opinion of other people and the extremist elements of both the "sides" are really giving the wrost of theirselves. In these cases, I prefer to stay informed reading news and thinking, without pay more attention to the many many discussions on facebok or similar, where fake news and fight seems to be the main characters in this days.

For these reasons (but not just for those), my mind comes back to the past. I need to remember there's always great people in the middle of bad people and this is a story that teach it.

I want to talk to you about Giorgio Ambrosoli and the criminal banker Michele Sindona. It was a very bad episode that involved our country and many others countries. I chose to add some of my pics instead of the pics of the characters of this story, because I think in this case the words are more important than the images.

We was in the 1974 and Ambrosoli, an italian lawer, was the liquidator (nominated by the Banca D'Italia, the central bank of Italy and the  national supervisory authority for the banks) of the "Banca Privata Italiana" that was an italian private bank controlled by the banker Sindona, who had also other banks under his control. This bank was into forced liquidation cause a big debts in the balance caused by some "strange" financial movements. It was very close to a financial crack and so the Authority decided to investigate. The Authority had some suspects about the banker Sindona since the 1971 for similar situations in other of his banks, but at that time the Authority decided to help those banks giving money to save the counts of the customers. That banks was forced to be only one (the Banca Privata Italiana) and a member of the Banca d'Italia became a member of the administrative board of this bank. This member started the first investigation about some unclear movements and he reported it to the Authority that nominated Ambrosoli as liquidator and he started to investigate very deeply. It was not simple, those years were really an hard time for my country. The years of lead, full of many different bloody facts where italians fight against italians, criminal pacts between politicians and mafia were discovered and citizens really needed to know the true behind the government. The suspect of the Banca D'Italia was about some illegal pacts between Sindona, some italian politician, some members of the Vatican's banks and the mafia. As you can understand, all the investigation was really dangerous for many different reasons.

Giorgio Ambrosoli started the investigation and he found the proof of many illegal movements and collusions with important character of the political and institutional italian scenes. During the investigation they found some evidences about the role of Sindone in the collapse of the Us Franklin National Bank and so there was a collaboration with the Us Justice department and the FBI.

During the investigation people involved in the illegal activities of Sindona tried to corrupt Ambrosoli, but he said no and continued his investigation searching all the truth about the case. Ambrosoli received many death threat, the criminals didn't want him to testify about the crack of the Banco Ambrosiano. During the last period of the investigation and after the death threats, Ambrosoli didn't have a great protection by the police or the government. Close to him, to help and protect him there were just few people: Ugo La Malfa (a politician), the Marshal Silvio Novembre. Close to him there was also the chief of Banca D'Italia Paolo Baffi until some months before Ambrosoli was killed, because Baffi was involved in a process for the crack of  Banco Ambrosiano (totally absolved after some time). The death threats didn't stop Ambrosoli, but  he was killed in the July 11 1979 . The killer was William Aricò, a member of the mafia in America, who was payed by Sindona (Sindona escaped from Italy to Us during the investigation). 

 Ambrosoli was awarded with a medal for his heroism after the death, but the absence of the government to protect him impressed so much every italian citizens. I was just a little girl, but in every family people talked about the horrible behaviour of the government in the case of Sindona. Italians started (for many similar cases too) to have less trust in the goverment, in the politicians and in the Vatican too.

About the Ambrosoli investigation and death there is a great movie entitled A Middle-Class Hero by Michele Placido.

It as a very long post, but I think the recent history of a country help to know better that country and people who live here. Every time I think about this story, I think that also between some many bad people, there's always some great good people who gave their lives for the justice. It's not important if their political thought are similar to mine or not, they are "just" good person, common people who was also extraordinary heroes.

See ya soon

Silvia