In the summer of 2006 Gianmario Roveraro, famous financier of Opus Dei, is killed and hacked to pieces with a machete after being kidnapped and segregated for two days. His killer is also his partner: arrested and tried, he will be sentenced to life imprisonment.
Roveraro, at the time considered the Catholic anti-Cuccia, four years earlier he had embarked on a mysterious international financial operation. The trial has left unresolved disturbing questions about the nature of the business that Roveraro was carrying out, also because the profits from that financial transaction were destined for charity, probably for structures linked to Opus Dei.
Starting from the results of the judicial investigation and investigating the relationships between the protagonists, the authors Angelo Mincuzzi and Giuseppe Oddo, journalists from Il Sole 24 Ore, retraced Roveraro's life and his business relationships, breaking down the wall that conceals Opus Dei's recruitment and financing mechanisms and revealing an opaque galaxy of companies controlled and managed by men of the Prelature. With the rigor of the journalistic investigation and the narrative twist of the "yellow", the reader is projected on a journey into a world where everything revolves around money and faith.
Here is the summary of some chapters of the investigative book “Opus Dei – The secret of money. Inside the mysteries of the Roveraro murder”, out today, published by Feltrinelli.
The Anglo-Austrian affair and Opus Dei (chapter 1)
Gianmario Roveraro, financier of Opus Dei, considered the anti-Cuccia in the 80s and 90s, when he was at the top of Sige (the management company of the IMI group) and Akros (an investment bank that gathered the elite of the Italian capitalism), embarked in 2002 on a mysterious international financial operation. With him are a Venetian fixer, Franco Todescato, a former banker, Fabio Gnudi, a Roman engineer close to Opus Dei, Giuseppe Maffei, and a young man from Parma, Filippo Botteri, who becomes his partner in an English company managed by a obscure trustee of Lugano, Federico De Vittori. The deal did not go through and Botteri, believing he had been cheated, kidnapped Roveraro in the summer of 2006, kept him prisoner for two days and killed him, cutting his body into seven pieces. Botteri will be sentenced to life imprisonment together with his two accomplices, but neither the investigation nor the trial shed light on the true nature of the Anglo-Austrian affair and do not explain why a financier of Roveraro's caliber went into business with people who had previous precedents with justice. According to some witnesses, Roveraro intended to donate the millionaire proceeds of the operation to foundations or structures linked to Opus Dei.
43 phone calls before death (chapter 6)
While still a prisoner of Botteri, locked up in an old building in the province of Modena, Roveraro made 43 phone calls using Skype with a PC made available by his executioner. Five calls are directed to the family, five to the administrator of Alter Sim (the stock investment company in which Roveraro is a shareholder and in which he has his savings) who should release one million euros for his redemption, and another 33 to the trustee De Vittori and the Venetian fixer Franco Todescato, with whom he had severed relations for some time. He even asked De Vittori to make 10 million euros available to him (later dropped to one million), even if it does not officially appear that the trustee administered the financier's funds in Switzerland.
The mysterious phone call (chapter 3)
During the days of the kidnapping, a businessman who Roveraro has known for more than twenty years, Anthony Weatherill, turns on his cell phone and realizes he has received a call from Roveraro's mobile phone. The financier's killer claims he got rid of Roveraro's cell phone immediately after the kidnapping. Weatherill talks about it informally to an acquaintance of the Ministry of the Interior, but the information does not reach the ears of the Milan magistrates who are investigating the murder.
The Sardinian track (chapter 3)
During the days of the kidnapping, a report arrives at the Milan prosecutor's office that could open a gap in the investigation. A prosecutor from Nuoro sends the transcripts of some telephone calls intercepted as part of an investigation into complex financial transactions in Italy and abroad carried out by a Sardinian businessman, shareholder of a supervisory institution. In conversations, the man claims that he went to Milan a couple of times to see Roveraro, who owed him one million euros. The last visit had taken place a week before the kidnapping. In another phone call with an accountant, the entrepreneur reports that Roveraro also owed one million euros to two other friends of his, probably to carry out a financial transaction. However, the track will be abandoned by the Milanese magistrates.
Encounter in Capitalia (chapter 3)
Despite having come out of the big business circle, Roveraro nevertheless continued to have relationships with characters at the highest levels of the banking and financial world. Some time before his death, the news spread that the Opus Dei financier went to see the CEO of Capitalia, Matteo Arpe, who however spreads a denial. In reality, within the Roman institute it is Marco Simeon who maintains relations with the world close to Opus Dei. Simeon was appointed advisor for institutional affairs by the president of Capitalia, Cesare Geronzi, who gave him de facto control of the Via della Conciliazione branch of the Banca di Roma, where the Vatican bank has accounts. Simeon also denies having met Roveraro, but adds that he knows that the Opus Dei financier had connections within Capitalia.
Palermo (chapter 9)
In 1998 Roveraro was appointed liquidator of the group of the Palermitan builder Vincenzo Rappa. About a year earlier Vincenzo Rappa and his son Filippo were arrested following the statements of some mafia pentiti, including Angelo Siino. Their entrepreneurial group, which also includes a local television, is creaking under debt. Heavy accusations emerge against Vincenzo Rappa, especially on relations with the boss Raffaele Ganci and with the Galatolo and Madonia clans. Rappa will be convicted of mafia association, his son for aggravated extortion. Calling Roveraro in Sicily is the accountant of the Rappas, Franco Rocca, a numerary from Opus Dei in Palermo. Roveraro, who will deal with the liquidation of the group for years, could not fail to know the heavy accusations made by the judiciary against the Rappas.
Dell'Utri (chapter 9)
According to the testimony of a former Opus Dei numerary, Marcello Dell'Utri (convicted of external competition in mafia association) is allegedly portrayed in an old photo during a spiritual retreat in the castle of Urio (Como) to which only numeraries could be admitted . This lends credence to the hypothesis that in his youth the PDL senator was part of the inner circle of Opus Dei. The name of Filippo Rappa also appears in the papers of the trial against Dell'Utri. The two met as boys and met again when the family of Sicilian builders negotiated with Fininvest the sale of television Sicily, the company that rebroadcasts the Rete 4 signal on the island.
The financing of Opus Dei (chapter 10)
Opus Dei is a money-eating machine: the foundations and apostolic initiatives headed by the Prelature are in constant need of money. It is an accountant from Bari, Pasquale Iamele, former partner of an influential supernumerary of the Apulian city, the lawyer Fabrizio Lombardo Pijola, who explains through which ways the Opera collects its financial resources. Iamele recounts having participated in meetings and spiritual retreats of Opus Dei, in which there was often talk of the economic livelihood of the Prelature, which seeks to recruit new followers above all from the elite of the world of professions, economy and finance, the part richest in society. According to Iamele, after each successful deal, he and his former partner paid sums in the order of 10 euros to Opus Dei structures, not counting the extraordinary collection campaigns.
Parmalat (Chapter 11)
For the first time, the name of Opus Dei appears in a judicial document relating to the Parmalat crackdown: the reference is in the investigation by the Swiss judiciary. In the interrogations of Andrea De Grandi – a Milanese trustee who acted as a figurehead for Luca Sala, the operational manager of the Italian branch of Bank of America on trial in Parma for bankruptcy and under investigation for money laundering in Switzerland – and in those of Cesare Forni, a lawyer De Grandi, Opus Dei is expressly mentioned. Sala made use of a senior manager of the Cantonal Bank of Graubünden, Nino Giuralarocca, to manage his bank accounts. De Grandi recounts that Giuralarocca was introduced to Forni by people linked to Opus Dei and that Forni introduced him to the banker from Grisons on the recommendation of a cardinal from the Opus Dei circle.
The network of companies (chapter 12)
The eighty-year-old Pierino Lucchini, a supernumerary from the first hour, is a character unknown to the financial news but who in reality plays a very prominent role in the shadows in the network of companies, associations and foundations that constitute the real driving force of Opus Dei. Lucchini heads the Fiduciaria Giardini, which is based in Milan, near Piazza San Babila, and is managed by men of the Prelature. The Giardini Trust Company holds shares of many companies owned by Opus Dei personalities. Together with Roveraro, Lucchini set up the company that later gave life to the Campus Biomedico, the most important structure of the Opera in Italy, and Lucchini himself is present directly or indirectly in the main companies and associations that make up the network that controls the assets of the Prelature. At the top of the pyramid is the Iser (Institute of Studies and Research) which performs the function of a real holding company for a group of companies: Adigi (which owns the buildings of the Opera in Milan), Rupe, Apser , Solferino Cultural Center, Cascina Cevola. All these companies have one thing in common: they are controlled by associations or foundations, which have no shareholders, and from a legal point of view they are independent from Opus Dei. The foundations and associations, which have no obligation to draw up financial statements, give life to an opaque system through which Opus Dei has de facto control of hospitals, schools, residences and cultural centres. In the 80s, the Immobiliare Quadrifoglio was domiciled at the Fiduciaria Giardini, which will become the owner Francesco Zummo, the entrepreneur from Palermo who was investigated by judge Giovanni Falcone for his links with Vito Ciancimino.
