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Propaganda Due
(; P2) was a Masonic lodge, founded in 1877, within the tradition of Continental Freemasonry and under the authority of Grand Orient of Italy. Its Masonic charter was withdrawn in 1976, and it was transformed by Worshipful Master Licio Gelli into an international, illegal, clandestine, anti-communist, anti-Soviet, anti-Marxist, and radical right criminal organization and secret society operating in contravention of Article 18 of the Constitution of Italy that banned all such secret associations. Licio Gelli continued to operate the unaffiliated lodge from 1976 to 1984. P2 was implicated in numerous Italian crimes and mysteries, including the collapse of the Holy See-affiliated Banco Ambrosiano, the contract killings of journalist Carmine Pecorelli and mobbed-up bank president Roberto Calvi, and political corruption cases within the nationwide Tangentopoli bribery scandal. P2 came to light through the investigations into the collapse of Michele Sindona's financial empire ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Licio Gelli
Licio Gelli (; 21 April 1919 – 15 December 2015) was an Italian Freemason and businessman. A fascist volunteer in his youth, he is chiefly known for his role in the Banco Ambrosiano scandal. He was revealed in 1981 as being the Venerable Master of the clandestine Masonic lodge Propaganda Due (P2). Early life Gelli was born in Pistoia, Tuscany. During the 1930s, Gelli, when he was still a seventeen-year-old student in a Liceo Classico high school in Pistoia, was expelled from all schools in Italy and left as a volunteer to fight in Spain with the Fascist Brigades that supported Generalissimo Franco. It was in the fighting of Malaga that his older brother Raffaello died. The youngest recruit in his contingent, he was decorated by Franco himself. Gelli also volunteered for the Blackshirts expeditionary forces sent by Mussolini in support of Francisco Franco's rebellion in the Spanish Civil War. He served as liaison officer between the Italian government and Nazi German ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Criminal Organization
In ordinary language, a crime is an unlawful act punishable by a state or other authority. The term ''crime'' does not, in modern criminal law, have any simple and universally accepted definition,Farmer, Lindsay: "Crime, definitions of", in Cane and Conoghan (editors), '' The New Oxford Companion to Law'', Oxford University Press, 2008 (), p. 263Google Books). though statutory definitions have been provided for certain purposes. The most popular view is that crime is a category created by law; in other words, something is a crime if declared as such by the relevant and applicable law. One proposed definition is that a crime or offence (or criminal offence) is an act harmful not only to some individual but also to a community, society, or the state ("a public wrong"). Such acts are forbidden and punishable by law. The notion that acts such as murder, rape, and theft are to be prohibited exists worldwide. What precisely is a criminal offence is defined by the criminal law o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Shadow Government (conspiracy)
The shadow government, also referred to as cryptocracy, secret government, or invisible government, is a family of theories based on the notion that real and actual political power resides not only with Representative democracy, publicly elected representatives but with private individuals who are exercising power behind the scenes, beyond the scrutiny of democratic institutions. According to this belief, the official elected government is subservient to the shadow government, which is the true executive power. Some of the groups proposed by these theories as constituting the shadow government include central banks, Masonic conspiracy theories, Freemasons, communists, Nazis, Rothschild_family, the Rothschilds, Intelligence agency, intelligence agencies, think tanks, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, organized Jewry, Holy See, the Vatican, Jesuit conspiracy theories, Jesuits, or List of conspiracy theories#Anti-Catholicism, Catholics in general, as well as secret societies, Corp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State Within A State
Deep state is a term used for (real or imagined) potential, unauthorized and often secret networks of power operating independently of a state's political leadership in pursuit of their own agendas and goals. Although the term originated in Turkey ("''Derin Devlet''"), various interpretations of the concept have emerged in other national contexts. In some, "deep state" is used to refer to perceived shadowy conspiracies, while in others it describes concerns about the enduring influence of military, intelligence, and bureaucratic institutions on democratic governance. In many cases, the perception of a deep state is shaped by historical events, political struggles, and the balance of power within government institutions. The use of the term has expanded beyond political science into popular culture, journalism and conspiracy theories, reflecting a broad range of beliefs about hidden networks of power operating behind the scenes. Particularly after the 2016 United States presidenti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Michele Sindona
Michele Sindona (; 8 May 1920 – 22 March 1986) was an Italian banker and convicted felon. Known in banking circles as "The Shark", Sindona was a banker for the Sicilian Mafia and the Vatican. Sindona was a member of the fascist Propaganda Due (#0501), a secret Masonic lodge of the Grand Orient of Italy. He was fatally poisoned in prison while serving a life sentence for the murder of lawyer Giorgio Ambrosoli. Early life and education Born into a poor family at Patti, a small ''comune'' (municipality) in the province of Messina (Sicily), to a Neapolitan father, a florist who specialized in funeral wreaths, and a Sicilian mother, Sindona was educated by the Jesuits, and showed very early in his life an unusual aptitude for mathematics and economics. He graduated with a law degree from the University of Messina in 1942. Career After landing on Sicily the Allied Forces gave important posts to the mafia, to reduce the influence of Communists and for them to organise t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bribery
Bribery is the corrupt solicitation, payment, or Offer and acceptance, acceptance of a private favor (a bribe) in exchange for official action. The purpose of a bribe is to influence the actions of the recipient, a person in charge of an official duty, to act contrary to their duty and the known rules of honesty and integrity. Gifts of money or other items of value that are otherwise available to everyone on an equivalent basis, and not for dishonest purposes, are not bribery. Offering a discount or a refund to all purchasers is a rebate (marketing), rebate and is not bribery. For example, it is legal for an employee of a Public Utilities Commission involved in electric rate regulation to accept a rebate on electric service that reduces their cost of electricity, when the rebate is available to other residential electric customers; however, giving a discount specifically to that employee to influence them to look favorably on the electric utility's rate increase applications would ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tangentopoli
(; ) was a nationwide judicial investigation into political corruption in Italy held in the early 1990s, resulting in the demise of the First Italian Republic and the disappearance of many political parties. Some politicians and industry leaders committed suicide after their crimes were exposed. Antonio Di Pietro was the main judicial figure in charge of the investigation. In some accounts, as many as 5,000 public figures fell under suspicion. At one point, more than half of the members of the Italian Parliament were under indictment, while more than 400 city and town councils were dissolved because of corruption charges. The estimated value of bribes paid annually in the 1980s by Italian and foreign companies bidding for large government contracts reached United States dollar, US$4 billion (6.5 trillion Italian lira, lire). The corrupt system uncovered by the investigation was referred to as ''Tangentopoli'' (). The term derives from Italian ''tangente'', which means "Kickback ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Political Corruption
Political corruption is the use of powers by government officials or their network contacts for illegitimate private gain. Forms of corruption vary but can include bribery, lobbying, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage, influence peddling, Graft (politics), graft, and embezzlement. Corruption may facilitate criminal enterprise, such as drug trafficking, money laundering, and human trafficking, although it is not restricted to these activities. Over time, corruption has been defined differently. For example, while performing work for a government or as a representative, it is unethical to accept a gift. Any free gift could be construed as a scheme to lure the recipient towards some biases. In most cases, the gift is seen as an intention to seek certain favors, such as work promotion, tipping in order to win a contract, job, or exemption from certain tasks in the case of junior worker handing in the gift to a senior employee who can be key in winning the favor. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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 business dealings with the Holy See. He was a native of Milan and was chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, which collapsed in one of Italy's biggest political scandals. Calvi's death by hanging in London in June 1982 is a source of enduring controversy and was ruled a murder after two coroners' inquests and an independent investigation. Five people were acquitted in Rome in June 2007 of conspiracy to murder Roberto Calvi. Popular suspicion has linked his death to allegedly corrupt officials of the Vatican Bank, the Sicilian Mafia, and the Continental Freemasonry lodge Propaganda Due. Life and career Roberto Calvi's father was the manager of the Banca Commerciale Italiana (Italian Commercial Bank). Calvi joined the bank after World War II, but he moved to Banco Ambrosiano, then Italy's second-largest bank, in 1947. He married in 1952 and had two children ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Carmine Pecorelli
Carmine "Mino" Pecorelli (; 14 September 1928 – 20 March 1979) was an Italian journalist, shot dead in Rome a year after former prime minister Aldo Moro's 1978 kidnapping and subsequent killing. He was described as a "maverick journalist with excellent secret service contacts".Moro's ghost haunts political life by Philip Willan, '''', May 9, 2003 According to Pecorelli, Aldo Moro's kidnapping had been organized by a "lucid superpower" and was inspired by the " logic of Yalta". Pecorelli's name was on [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Contract Killing
Contract killing (also known as murder-for-hire) is a form of murder or assassination in which one party hires another party to kill a targeted person or people. It involves an illegal agreement which includes some form of compensation, monetary or otherwise. Either party may be a person, group, or organization. Contract killing has been associated with organized crime, government conspiracies, dictatorships and vendettas. Contract killing provides the hiring party with the advantage of not having to carry out the actual killing, making it more difficult for law enforcement to connect the client with the murder. The likelihood that authorities will establish that party's guilt for the committed crime, especially due to lack of forensic evidence linked to the contracting party, makes the case more difficult to attribute to the hiring party. Contract killers may exhibit serial killer traits, but are generally not classified as such because of third-party killing objectives and ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Banco Ambrosiano
Banco Ambrosiano was an Italian bank that was established in 1896 and collapsed in 1982. The Vatican-based Institute for the Works of Religion, commonly known as the ''Vatican Bank'', was Banco Ambrosiano's main shareholder. The Vatican Bank was accused of funnelling covert United States funds to the Polish trade union Solidarity and to the Nicaraguan Contras through Banco Ambrosiano. Members * Franco Ratti, chairman * Carlo Canesi, senior manager then chairman of Banco Ambrosiano Holding starting from 1965 * Roberto Calvi, general manager of Banco Ambrosiano since 1971, appointed chairman from 1975 to his death in June 1982; he was often referred to as "God's Banker" because of his close financial ties with the Vatican * Paul Marcinkus, president of Vatican Bank (aka ''" Istituto per le Opere di Religione"''), had been a director of Ambrosiano Overseas, based in Nassau, Bahamas * Carlo De Benedetti became deputy-chairman for less than two months, after Roberto Calvi's tria ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
