ITALY
The Local
Licio Gelli, a masonic leader implicated in some of the darkest scandals of Italy’s recent political history, has died in Tuscany aged 96.
Gelli was the head of the secretive ‘P2’ lodge – a masonic structure that exerted considerable political power until it was discovered by Italian investigators in 1981.
P2, or Propaganda Due, was an influential secret network that counted politicians, judges, bankers and senior military figures amongst its members.
Its tentacles stretched throughout the upper echelons of the Italian establishment, although an attempt to have its members jailed for political conspiracy and attempting to destabilise the state finally failed in 1994.
It is best known internationally for having been at the heart of a murder mystery involving both the mafia and the Vatican which centered the body of “God’s banker” Roberto Calvi being found hanging beneath London’s Blackfriars bridge in 1982.
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