33 Guilty in Bank Collapse

MILAN, Italy — Italian financier Carlo De Benedetti and 32 other people were convicted of fraud Thursday in connection with the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy’s worst post-war banking failure.

A Milan court sentenced De Benedetti, chairman of computer group Ing. C. Olivetti & C., to six years and four months in prison. It found that he had kept silent about the bank’s problems when he quit as its deputy chairman seven months before the collapse.

Banco Ambrosiano, once Italy’s largest private banking group, crashed in August, 1982, with more than $1 billion of debt. De Benedetti was deputy chairman from November, 1981, until January, 1982.