Francesco Pazienza (born in 1946, Monteparano) is an Italian businessman, and former officer of the Italian military intelligence agency,
SISMI
Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Militare (abbreviated SISMI, ''Military Intelligence and Security Service'') was the military intelligence agency of Italy from 1977–2007.
With the reform of the Italian Intelligence Services app ...
. As of April 2007, he has been paroled to the community of
Lerici
Lerici ( lij, Lerxi, locally ) is a town and ''comune'' in the province of La Spezia in Liguria (northern Italy), part of the Italian Riviera. It is situated on the coast of the Gulf of La Spezia, southeast of La Spezia. It is known as the place ...
, after serving many years in prison, including a 1993 conviction due to his role in the
Banco Ambrosiano scandal, and a 1982 conviction for mishandling state secrets.
Pazienza holds a degree in medicine from the
University of Rome. He worked as a business consultant in France during the 1970s. In 1979 he was hired into SISMI, and became an assistant to SISMI director, General
Giuseppe Santovito
Giuseppe is the Italian form of the given name Joseph,
from Latin Iōsēphus from Ancient Greek Ἰωσήφ (Iōsḗph), from Hebrew יוסף.
It is the most common name in Italy and is unique (97%) to it.
The feminine form of the name is Giusep ...
. Pazienza left the intelligence agency in wake of the
Propaganda Due
Propaganda Due (; P2) was a Masonic lodge under the Grand Orient of Italy, founded in 1877. Its Masonic charter was withdrawn in 1976, and it transformed into a criminal, clandestine, anti-communist, anti-Soviet, anti-leftist, pseudo-Masonic, a ...
scandal that rocked the Italian political scene in 1981. The Banco Ambrosiano scandal,
Roberto Calvi
Roberto Calvi (13 April 1920 – 17 June 1982) was an Italian banker, dubbed "God's Banker" () by the press because of his close association with the Holy See. He was a native of Milan and was chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, which collapsed in on ...
's "suicide," and charges of mishandling state secrets concerned with the
1980 Bologna bombing, made Pazienza a fugitive from Italian law.
Eventually, Pazienza ended up in the United States. A first
extradition
Extradition is an action wherein one jurisdiction delivers a person accused or convicted of committing a crime in another jurisdiction, over to the other's law enforcement. It is a cooperative law enforcement procedure between the two jurisdict ...
request from Italy was handed to the U.S. government in 1984, but Pazienza was not yet arrested. His arrest come only on March 4, 1985.
Extradition procedures ensued, and a judge order him to stand trial in Italy, an appeal process did not change that, and Pazienza was handed over to the Italian government in June 1986.
Mehmet Ali Ağca
During the trial of
Mehmet Ali Ağca
Mehmet Ali Ağca (; born 9 January 1958) is a Turkish assassin who murdered left-wing journalist Abdi İpekçi on 1 February 1979, and later shot and wounded Pope John Paul II on 13 May 1981, after escaping from a Turkish prison. After serving ...
's
1981 assassination attempt on
Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II ( la, Ioannes Paulus II; it, Giovanni Paolo II; pl, Jan Paweł II; born Karol Józef Wojtyła ; 18 May 19202 April 2005) was the head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of the Vatican City State from 1978 until his ...
, Ağca claimed to have been visited by Pazienza in his prison cell at Rome's Ascoli Piceno (this came just after the presiding judge called for ''pazienza'' in the court room). That Pazienza visited Ağca was also claimed by a former
camorrista turned
pentiti
''Pentito'' (; lit. "repentant"; plural: ''pentiti'') is used colloquially to designate collaborators of justice in Italian criminal procedure terminology who were formerly part of criminal organizations and decided to collaborate with a public ...
,
Giovanni Pandico
Giovanni Pandico (born June 24, 1944) is a former Italian Camorrista who was a member of the Nuova Camorra Organizzata (NCO), a Camorra organization in Naples. Pandico rose to become one of Camorra boss, Raffaele Cutolo's underwriters within the or ...
. From his New York prison, Pazienza denied ever having visited Ağca; Pazienza was question on this issue by Italian investigative judge, Ilario Martella, in New York. A short time later, Martella dropped the charges of Agca being "coached" by supposed elements from the Italian military intelligence.
Banco Ambrosiano
When Pazienza was still a fugitive, he was questioned in the United States by Customs agents regarding financial fraud charges brought in Italy that had grown out of the disappearance of funds, about $3 million, from the
Banco Ambrosiano
Banco Ambrosiano was an Italian bank that collapsed in 1982. At the centre of the bank's failure was its chairman, Roberto Calvi, and his membership in the illegal former Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due (aka P2). The Vatican-based Institute for the ...
. Pazienza later claimed that these Customs agents had told him that
Stefano Delle Chiaie
Stefano Delle Chiaie (13 September 1936, Caserta – 10 September 2019, Rome) was an Italian neo-fascist terrorist. He was the founder of ''Avanguardia Nazionale'', a member of '' Ordine Nuovo'', and founder of Lega nazionalpopolare. He went on ...
had been seen in
Miami, Florida
Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
, with an unidentified
Turk,
and repeated his position during the time he was on trial on charges stemming from the
1980 Bologna bombing. It is unclear if this Turk was
Oral Çelik or
Abdullah Çatlı
Abdullah Çatlı (1 June 1956 – 3 November 1996) was a Turkish secret government agent, as well as a contract killer for the National Intelligence Organization (MİT). He led the Grey Wolves, the youth branch of the Nationalist Movement Party ...
.
Billy Carter Investigation
1985 Wall Street Journal investigation suggested that a series of
Billygate
William Alton Carter (March 29, 1937 – September 25, 1988) was an American farmer, businessman, brewer, and politician. The younger brother of U.S. President Jimmy Carter; he promoted Billy Beer and Peanut Lolita; and he was a candidate for ...
articles written by
Michael Ledeen
Michael Arthur Ledeen (; born August 1, 1941) is an American historian, and neoconservative foreign policy analyst. He is a former consultant to the United States National Security Council, the United States Department of State, and the United St ...
and published in ''
The New Republic
''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hum ...
'' in October 1980 were part of a disinformation campaign intended to influence the outcome of that year's presidential election. According to the reporting, Francesco Pazienza alleged that Ledeen was paid $120,000 for his work on Billygate and other projects. Pazienza was later tried and convicted in absentia for using "extortion and fraud to obtain embarrassing facts about
Billy Carter
William Alton Carter (March 29, 1937 – September 25, 1988) was an American farmer, businessman, brewer, and politician. The younger brother of U.S. President Jimmy Carter; he promoted Billy Beer and Peanut Lolita; and he was a candidate for ...
".
Bologna bombing
Pazienza was sentenced in 1988 for trying to divert the investigation into the
1980 bombing of the Bologna train station, on charges relating the planting of similar explosive materials in a train in 1981, leading a trail away from the actual perpetrators. In 1990, his conviction was reversed on appeals, but a retrial resulted in a definitive prison term handed out in 1995.
Notes
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pazienza
1946 births
Living people
Italian businesspeople
SISMI
People extradited from the United States
People extradited to Italy
Italian spies