The_Info_Web/70 - DISPATCHES/2026-10-12 Particularly Significant.md

title	date	status	summary	entities	tags
Particularly Significant	2026-10-12	published	The P2 lists seized in 1981 held BNL's director general and four of its directors; ten years later an Italian Senate commission found the Atlanta loans tolerated if not encouraged from above.	Banca Nazionale del Lavoro Propaganda Due Tina Anselmi Luigi Sardelli Roberto Calvi Bank of Credit and Commerce International Gianuario Carta Christopher Drogoul Marvin Shoob BNL Scandal	BNL P2 Iraqgate BCCI

Particularly Significant

The membership lists of the Propaganda Due lodge seized at Castiglion Fibocchi in March 1981 were published by the Italian government on May 21, 1981. Among the names is "Dott. Alberto Ferrari."¹ The parliamentary commission of inquiry on P2, chaired by Tina Anselmi, counted sixty-seven members drawn from the Treasury, the banks and finance, and singled out a few banks where the presences were "particolarmente significative per qualità e rappresentatività." The first it named was the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro: four members of the board of directors, the director general, and three central directors, one of them secretary of the board.²

Luigi Sardelli, who ran BNL's North American operations from 1987, later answered written questions from Henry B. Gonzalez. He wrote that Professor A. Ferrari, then BNL's managing director, "had to resign in shame in 1981 because of his affiliation with Lodge P2." He wrote that on December 25, 1975 Ferrari had asked him to go to the Gulf to explore a BNL merchant bank "with a group of BNL friends," and that the people he met there were Pakistani nationals connected to Bank of Credit and Commerce International. He wrote that Ferrari was a close friend of Roberto Calvi of Banco Ambrosiano, and that the bank's relationship with BCCI, Ghaith Pharaon and Marc Rich was the exclusive domain of Ferrari, A. Florio and A. Conzara. Ferrari had handpicked Florio to head the International Division.³

The FBI searched BNL's Atlanta branch on August 4, 1989. The indictment returned on February 28, 1991 charged the branch manager Christopher Drogoul, two other branch officers, a Turkish trading company and its executive, the Iraqi state Rafidain Bank and four Iraqi officials.⁴ Angelo Florio was one of seven Italian nationals who in 1993 declared they would not come to the United States to testify. Drogoul named him, with Giacomo Pedde and Teodoro Monaco, as the officials who gave the authorizations he relied on.⁵

The Italian Senate commission of inquiry under Senator Gianuario Carta approved its preliminary report on December 21, 1991. It recorded that no official of BNL in New York or Rome was among the defendants. It found that the thesis of a fraud by a group of unfaithful officials had proved inconsistent, and that the Atlanta operations could not have been unknown in Rome and New York and were instead "tollerata se non incoraggiata." It also recorded that the Department of Justice had denied the commission access to documents and witnesses, citing grand jury secrecy and national security.⁶ On October 5, 1992 Judge Marvin Shoob wrote: "The Court concludes that officials at BNL-Rome were aware of and approved Mr. Drogoul's activities."⁷

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1. Presidenza del Consiglio dei Ministri, "Elenco degli iscritti alla loggia P2," published May 21, 1981. https://www.stragi.it/archivio/doc/66.pdf ↩︎

2. Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sulla loggia massonica P2 (Anselmi, President), Relazione, Doc. XXIII n. 2, IX Legislatura, p. 116. https://www.archivioantimafia.org/p2/commissione_parlamentare/01.%20Relazioni%20Minoranza%20(0-005)/000-relazione-anselmi.pdf ↩︎

3. Luigi Sardelli, "Written Responses to Chairman Gonzalez's Questions," in House Committee on Banking, Finance and Urban Affairs, Testimony of Former Employees of the Banca Nazionale del Lavoro, Serial No. 103-95 (1994), p. 176. https://archive.org/details/testimonyofforme1994unit ↩︎

4. Frederick B. Lacey, Part I of the report of the Independent Counsel, in Serial No. 103-95, pp. 361-366 and 413; General Accounting Office, T-NSIAD-91-13, March 14, 1991. https://archive.org/details/testimonyofforme1994unit ↩︎

5. United States v. Drogoul, 1 F.3d 1546 (11th Cir. 1993). ↩︎

6. Senato della Repubblica, X Legislatura, Commissione parlamentare d'inchiesta sul caso della filiale di Atlanta della Banca nazionale del lavoro e sue connessioni, Rapporto preliminare, Doc. XXII-bis n. 3, December 21, 1991, pp. 2, 8-9. https://www.parlamento.it/service/PDF/PDFServer/BGT/914635.pdf ↩︎

7. United States v. Drogoul, Order of Judge Marvin H. Shoob, dated October 5, 1992, in Serial No. 103-95, pp. 205-206. https://archive.org/details/testimonyofforme1994unit ↩︎