Italy Financier Sindona Dies; Cyanide Blamed
Michele Sindona, the world financier who once advised the Vatican and who was blamed for causing the biggest U.S. bank failure in history, died Saturday, two days after swallowing cyanide in his prison cell.
A lawyer for Sindona’s family, Oreste Dominioni, said Sindona had been poisoned but that investigators have not yet determined who the killer is.
The 65-year-old Sicilian, sentenced to life in prison on Tuesday, collapsed in his prison cell during breakfast Thursday and lapsed into a coma. After he was hospitalized, doctors announced that he had ingested a massive dose of cyanide.
Investigators will have to determine if it was suicide or murder.
Justice Minister Fermo Mino Martinazzoli said in briefing members of Parliament on the case Friday that he received a report that a prison guard heard Sindona say after drinking the cyanide, “They have poisoned me!”
Politicians demanded that government officials explain how Sindona’s poisoning could happen in the maximum-security Voghera Prison.
In 1980, a U.S. federal court convicted him of embezzling $45 million from the Franklin National Bank, causing the largest bank failure in American history.
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