# Banco Ambrosiano Banco Ambrosiano was an Italian bank founded in Milan in 1896 by the Catholic lawyer Giuseppe Tovini and named for Saint Ambrose -- explicitly a "Catholic bank," known as the "priests' bank." Under chairman [[Roberto Calvi]] it built a labyrinth of offshore shell companies and collapsed in 1982 unable to account for over a billion dollars, one of postwar Italy's largest scandals. The [[Vatican Bank]] was its principal shareholder. It is the literal "banking tentacle" of [[The Octopus]] frame. ## The offshore machine and the collapse From the 1960s the bank operated through a Luxembourg holding company and a Swiss arm (Banco del Gottardo), and Calvi created shell companies in Panama, the Bahamas, Nicaragua, Peru and elsewhere to move money out of Italy, prop up the share price, and obtain unsecured loans. A 1978 Bank of Italy report predicted disaster; the investigating magistrate Emilio Alessandrini was later murdered by left-wing terrorists. When the bank failed in 1982 the shortfall was put at roughly $1.287 billion (sources range from about $700 million to $1.5 billion, with some secondary accounts citing higher). After Calvi fled, the Bank of Italy took over and the institution was reconstituted as Nuovo Banco Ambrosiano. ## The Vatican settlement In 1984 the Vatican agreed to pay Ambrosiano's creditors a large sum -- commonly reported around $224-244 million -- as "recognition of moral involvement," without admitting legal liability. [[Propaganda Due]] master Licio Gelli was eventually convicted in connection with the crash (a 12-year sentence confirmed in 1998). ## Epistemic status The fraud, the offshore network, and the convictions are court-documented. The exact collapse figure varies by source, and contested claims -- that the bank financed Poland's Solidarity at the Vatican's request, or the precise legal culpability of the [[Vatican Bank]] -- were never adjudicated and should be treated as unresolved. ## See also - [[The Octopus]] - [[Roberto Calvi]] - [[Vatican Bank]] - [[Propaganda Due]]