ITALY
Corriere della Sera
ROMA - «Faccendiere... Ma perché continuate a chiamarmi così? Io ero e sono un imprenditore, un immobiliarista», protesta Flavio Carboni, dopo che il suo nome è tornato ad alimentare le cronache sui misteri di 25 anni fa, con l’intreccio tra la morte del banchiere Roberto Calvi e la scomparsa di Emanuela Orlandi. Nonostante l’assoluzione nel processo di primo grado per l’omicidio Calvi.
[translation]
The interview " I never knew Marcinkus. And don't call me faccendiere (trafficker)"
Carboni: that woman lies
They bring up my name because it stirs curiosity
" Marcinkus was the Vatican's side hostile to Calvi, for that he wasn't useful. The "gang of the Magliana? Never heard of it"
ROME - «Trafficker... Why are continuing to call me that way? I was and I am an entrepreneur, a real estate dealer", Flavio Carboni protests, after his name came back to feed the chronicles on the mysteries of 25 years ago, with the plot between the death of the banker Roberto Calvi and the disappearance of Emanuela Orlandi. That notwithstanding his acquittal in the first degree trial for the Calvi homicide.
All right Doctor Carboni. Then, you, as an entrepreneur, have you ever known Ms. Sabrina Minardi?
«No, I don't remember of that».
Yet the witness says she was at dinner in your home, where she met Calvi and monsignor Marcinkus.
«The fact is I never met monsignor Marcinkus. Other prelates and cardinals did, Palazzini, Oddi, Angelo Rossi and others, but Marcinkus, no. Neither he nor Mennini".
That means neither the president nor the administrator of IOR (the Vatican bank). Isn't that strange for a person who was a mediator between the Vatican bank and Calvi?
«No, because Marcinkus and Mennini were hostile to Calvi and for that there was no reason to have to do with them. I was in contact with other people. However I tell you Ms. Minardi lies, for even Calvi never came to my home. I know she says in addition to that that Calvi lent her a plane to go to Paris, but Calvi had no plane, he used mine".
And about Enrico De Pedis, who was Minardi's companion? Have you never seen him, too?
«Never. For me the Magliana was only a Rome neighborhood, I never knew anything about that infamous gang".
Yet you knew Domenico Balducci, assassinated by the Magliana gang. And Pippo Calo', the mafia man who was in contact with the Roman gangsters.
«I knew Pippo Calo' under the name of Mario Aglialoro, and to inform me that behind that name was hidden a mafia boss from Palermo was judge Imposimato. I only made a transaction with him, about which all was clarified. If Calo' made businesses with Balducci, what haveI to do with that? For me Balducci was an entrepreneur who did things which in that period weren't considered as crimes. He had relationships with senators and other personalities, he even presented the vice-chief of the police in Rome to me. I have no idea why they killed him".
There is someone who explained that with an anology with the Calvi homicide: a punishment for money to be laundered and then to be invested but which was never given back.
«You speak about a Calvi homicide, but for me it remains a suicide, one thousand per thousand. If ever a person had good reasons to commit suicide, that day Calvi had all of them, unfortunately".
The ruling which acquitted you and the other defendants confirms it was also a homicide.
«Because it's based upon some technical findings which are contradicted by other ones, including the one I deem to be the most founded and that certifies the suicide. In any case I don't understand why the mafia had to go as far as London to kill Calvi. There are a lot absurdities, which have been persecuting me for 25 years".
The answers to your statements are in the papers of the trial held recently and in those which will be held afterwards . Including the last investigation which includes the kidnapping of Emanuela Orlandi in the plot which brought to the death of Calvi, as the banker's son assumes. What do you think about that disappearance?
«I don't know what to say. I imagine it could have been a revenge against the Vatican for Pope John Paul II's support to the battle against the Soviet communism, at the same level of the assassination attempt of the Pope and the same scandal of the Vatican bank. I don't know what to say. In all cases Calvi's son was considered by his father as brainless and I don't know anything of the hypothesis that Orlandi could have been kidnapped by mistake, instead of that Mr. Gugel's daughter".
But isn't there in your companies a partner called Rita Gugel?
«I haven't the faintest remembrance of that name".
What kind of life the entrepreneur Flavio Carboni is leading now?
«I'm trying to go back to my world, in the real estate market. But I don't know (he says that laughing) neither Ricucci nor Coppola, nor other belonging to that group of people, otherwise they would have arrested me again. I never saw Pazienza again, who according to me is a victim, too, nor Berlusconi, even if I sold him my villa in Sardinia and sometimes I happen to go to Portofino, where he owns another home. I lead a secluded life, even after 25 years of fantasies about my name there is still someone who accuses me without ever having known me. Evidently I still seem to stir some interest".
Giovanni Bianconi