Banco Ambrosiano - Clearstream Scandal

Clearstream Scandal

Just before the media revealed the Ambrosiano scandal, Gérard Soisson, manager of transaction clearing company Clearstream, was found dead in Corsica, two months after Ernest Backes's dismissal from Clearstream in May 1983. Banco Ambrosiano was one of the many banks to have un-published accounts in Clearstream. Backes, formerly the third highest-ranking officer of Clearstream and a primary source for Denis Robert's book on Clearstream's scandal, Revelation$, claims he "was fired because (he) knew too much about the Ambrosiano scandal. When Soisson died, the Ambrosiano affair wasn't yet known as a scandal. (After it was revealed) I realized that Soisson and I had been at the crossroads. We moved all those transactions known later in the scandal to Lima and other branches. Nobody even knew there was a Banco Ambrosiano branch in Lima and other South American countries." As of 2005, while the Italian justice has opened up again the investigation concerning the murder of Roberto Calvi, Ambrosiano's chairman, it has asked the support of Ernest Backes, and will investigate Gerard Soisson's death, according to Lucy Komisar. Licio Gelli, headmaster of P2 masonic lodge, and mafioso Giuseppe "Pippo" Calò, are being prosecuted for the assassination of Roberto Calvi.