Free In God's Name by David Yallop Page B

told a story which reads like an outline for a Hollywood movie.
    Monsignors Edward Martinez, Carl Rauber and Justin Rigali listened while William Lynch told of a police investigation that had begun in the world of the New York Mafia and had led inexorably to the Vatican. He told the priests that a package of 14.5 million dollars’ worth * of American counterfeit bonds had been carefully and painstakingly created by a network of members of the Mafia in the USA. The package had been delivered to Rome in July 1971 and there was substantial evidence to establish that the ultimate destination of those bonds was the Vatican Bank.
    Lynch advised them that much of the evidence, from separate sources, strongly indicated that someone with financial authority within the Vatican had ordered the fake bonds. He pointed out that other evidence also indicated the 14.5 million dollars was merely a down payment, and that the total of counterfeit bonds ordered was 950 million dollars’ worth.
    The attorney then revealed the name of the ‘someone with financial authority’ who had master-minded the illegal transaction. On the basis of the evidence in Lynch’s hands, it was Bishop Paul Marcinkus.
    Displaying remarkable self-control the three priests listened as the two US attorneys outlined the evidence.
    At this stage of the investigation a number of the conspirators had already been arrested. One of them who had felt the desire to unburden himself was Mario Foligni, self-styled Count of San Francisco with an honorary doctorate in Theology. A first-class conman, Foligni had on more than one occasion narrowly avoided prison. When he was suspected of having manipulated the fraudulent bankruptcy of a company he controlled, a Rome magistrate had issued a search warrant to the finance police. Opening Foligni’s safe, the police had discovered a signed blessing from Pope Paul VI. They had apologized for the intrusion and departed.
    Subsequently others had been equally impressed with Foligni’s Vatican connections. He had opened the Vatican doors to an Austrian named Leopold Ledl. It was Ledl who had put the Vatican deal together – the purchase of 950 million dollars’ worth of counterfeit bonds, the purchase price to be 635 million dollars. ‘Commission’ of 150 million dollars would be paid back by the gang to the Vatican, leaving the Mafia with 485 million dollars and the Vatican with bonds that had a face value of nearly one billion dollars.
    The American Mafia had been sceptical about the deal until Ledl produced a letter from the Vatican. Written under the letter-heading of the Sacra Congregazione Dei Religiosi it was confirmation that the Vatican wished to ‘buy the complete stock of the merchandise up to the sum of 950 million dollars’.
    Foligni had told the American investigators that Marcinkus, ever prudent, had requested that a trial deposit of one-and-a-half million dollars’ worth of the bonds be made at Handelsbank in Zürich. According to Foligni, Marcinkus had wanted to satisfy himself that the bonds would pass as genuine. Late in July the ‘trial’ deposit was duly made by Foligni. He nominated Vatican cleric Monsignor Mario Fornasari as the beneficiary of the account he opened.
    A second ‘trial’ deposit of two-and-a-half million dollars’ worth had been made at the Banco di Roma in September 1971. On both occasions the bonds had passed bank scrutiny, a tribute to Mafia skill. Regrettably for the conspirators, both banks had sent samples to New York for physical examination. The Bankers Association in New York ascertained that the bonds were false. Hence the unusual presence of American attorneys and men from the FBI within the Vatican walls.
    Apart from a desire to recover the balance of 10 million dollars’ worth of the initial delivery, Lynch and his colleagues were anxious to bring all the participants in the crime to justice.
    Foligni had told the investigators that the reason the Vatican required the fake