Angelo Rizzoli, from Corriere to bankruptcy

Destiny had nominated him to be the leader of the third generation of the most powerful publishing and cinematographic dynasty in Italy. But Angelo Rizzoli junior, known as Angelone due to the size of his body, son of Andrea, grandson of grandfather Angelo, the founder of the publishing house of the same name, rather than enjoying the wealth and prestige of bearing such a name, he only savored the consequences , the bitterness of an endless precipice, with the accumulated fortunes ending up in the vortex of debts, a sort of Romolo Augustolo of the newspapers forced to lend his famous surname to cover an obscure round of reckless operations of Roberto Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano, of the P2 by Licio Gelli and the Vatican Ior by Paul Marcinkus. Angelo Rizzoli was not yet 35 years old and his life had already entered a tunnel with no exit, crushed by powerful and unscrupulous characters.

And all this because Andrea Rizzoli, advised and pushed by Eugenio Cefis, the strong man of Montedison, took it into his head to buy Corriere della Sera, the dream of three generations, the arrival point of an adventure begun by the owner Angelo of a small typography, which then grew dramatically to dominate national publishing. But the Rizzolis lacked the newspaper, a vulnus for family pride: what could be better then than the Corriere, especially since the owners of the time (Giulia Maria Crespi with the support of the Agnellis and the Morattis on behalf of Eni ) gave the impression of wanting to give in?

So four years after the death of Angelo, the founder, his son Andrea realizes the dream, paying little attention to the price: in June 1974 he buys the share of Crespi for 27 billion and that of ENI for 4 billion. With 66% of the capital, Rizzoli could have done without acquiring the remaining shares in the hands of Agnelli's Fiat, but, noblesse oblige, he undertook to take them over by July 1977. Il Corriere was officially owned by Rizzoli but already on via Solferino they ran the most disparate and not very reassuring voices on the independence of the newspaper and on the freedom of the press. They were talking about a Cefis who, hiding behind Rizzoli, was plotting to use the Corriere to influence Italian finance and publishing. P2 via Umberto Ortolani, Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano and the Vatican IOR will join this conquest project as soon as possible: cumbersome companions of Rizzoli in a journey that will quickly lead to catastrophe.

Because Andrea Rizzoli had bought almost with his eyes closed, trusting Cefis and signing an operation worth a total of 63 billion: he had climbed to the top but at the top instead of glory, Rizzoli found an abyss of losses and debts. A financial situation that would bring him more and more into the arms of P2 and Banco Ambrosiano. In this nightmarish climate, a big bearded boy appeared in via Solferino: he was Andrea's son, he is in fact the new young "master" who, on the wings of glory and money, manages to marry the beautiful actress of the moment, Eleonora George. A marriage that won't last long. Even the Corriere is in fact in the hands of the others, of Calvi, of Gelli, of Marcinkus, so much so that Angelone, a little shy, a little inexperienced, doesn't take a step without having a man in a cardigan with him, come on silver-white hair. This is Bruno Tassan-Din. It is he, a Bocconi graduate, who holds the ranks of the newspaper now at the mercy of increasingly reckless covert maneuvers.

Angelo junior is alone: ​​his father Andrea is squandering his life between the villa of Cap Ferrat and the casinos of the Côte d'Azur until he loses – it is said – 4 billion in a single evening. It is an abyss with no stopping point. Also because Cefis, which promised heaven and earth, was liquidated by Montedison and disappeared in Canada. Tassan-Din, P2 card in his pocket, however has a plan ready: he finds the deus ex machina in Umberto Ortolani, a lawyer with a Rome office who has one foot in P2 and the other in the Vatican. He will be the one to put Rizzoli in contact with Calvi, two pawns under close surveillance by the P2 and the Vatican. Calvi begins to open the purse strings and finances the Corriere through the most disparate branches of the Banco, from the one in Nassau to the Banco Andino. In exchange, Rizzoli becomes a shareholder of Banco. Dangerous and underground crossings but in the shareholders' register, in the light of the sun, in the Corriere shareholding structure the majority shareholder remains Rizzoli.

In fact, everyone is in charge except Angelone: ​​in particular, the Vatican is also in charge, hidden behind a ghost holding company. A swirl of capital and packages while Rizzoli launches itself into an expensive purchasing campaign, from the Mattino of Naples to the Piccolo of Trieste, from the Eco of Padua to the Alto Adige. In via Solferino a young and then slightly less pot-bellied Maurizio Costanzo is called to direct the Occhio, the popular newspaper which, instead of booming, will die after a few months. In the meantime, Il Corriere gives space to preposterous interviews with Argentine politicians and ministers for the sole purpose of promoting Banco's operations in South America. In July 1977, the IOR gave the Rizzolis the availability of 20,4 billion lire to service a capital increase aimed at paying the Fiat share in Corriere. The loan from the Vatican bank is a further act which proves that control had changed hands: from Rizzoli to the Vatican and to P2, so much so that in 1978 Umberto Ortolani took the place of an Andrea Rizzoli by now reduced to a ghost of the past, even if the name Rizzoli continues to act as a screen.

Calvi obtained that 80% of the Corriere's capital be deposited with the Ambrosiano bank as a guarantee for the loans granted. Packages which will then be transferred from Calvi to the IOR when the cold-eyed banker begins to ask the Vatican for help in order to save the Banco's shaky accounts. The Vatican will thus be for a certain period the unexpected main owner of Via Solferino. But before the Banco Corriere goes haywire, both overwhelmed by the P2 scandal that exploded in '81. In the list of members of the Gelli loggia, many names of powerful emerge. With membership card no. 532 there is also Angelone Rizzoli. Il Corriere ends up in receivership while Angelo, his brother Alberto and Tassan Din are arrested for bankruptcy on charges of having "hidden, dissipated or distracted" over 85 billion lire.

Angelo remains in prison for 13 months. During his detention, his father Andrea suffers a heart attack and dies. The younger sister Isabella, just eighteen, is under investigation and deprived of her assets. Threatened several times with arrest, she will fall into a severe depression and commit suicide in 1987, at the age of 22. For Rizzoli jr the paper empire has now turned into a nightmare that weighs on his future. All of his assets end up under seizure. He will also have to bear the shame of seeing that Corriere that his father had overpaid end up again in the hands of the Agnellis at a bargain price. Rizzoli will try to be right through legal channels but without success. Not only in the same year in which the Corriere returns to the Agnells, the Civil Court of Appeal of Rome condemns him, while he is still in prison, for distracting conduct to the detriment of Cineriz. But the cinematographic empire that was shattered did not discourage Angelone from starting making films again in the 10s after having paid XNUMX billion for the bankruptcy of his marriage to Giorgi and paid off all debts with the Corriere. He's a loser but he will never be poor as demonstrated by yet another mishap today.

In fact, he disappears from the news, amidst everyone's disinterest, as a candidate by fate to be the king of the media. Angelo jr – now seventy years old and once again involved in a judicial storm – will say to Claudio Sabelli Fioretti a few years after his dramatic exit from the Corriere, in an interview also cited by Wikipedia: "Since then I have only passed once in via Angelo Rizzoli , in Milan. It was a huge emotion. I was in front of something called Rizzoli, the headquarters built by Angelo Rizzoli and I bear the same name. I always dream of returning there as an owner. But Holderlin said: 'Man is a god when he dreams and a beggar when he reflects'. When I reflect, I put my heart at rest. I will never go back to Milan. Never again in via in Rizzoli”.