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Businessman Gets 4 1/2 Years in Collapse of Big Italian Bank

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Reuters

A prominent Italian businessman was sentenced to 4 1/2 years in jail Monday for his part in Italy’s most spectacular postwar bank failure, the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.

Carlo de Benedetti was sentenced in a Milan appeals court with 15 others for his involvement in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano--then Italy’s largest private bank.

De Benedetti, chairman of information technology group Olivetti, will appeal the sentence.

A lower court sentenced De Benedetti to six years and four months in April 1992.

Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in 1982. De Benedetti left the bank seven months before it went belly up.

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Under an alleged agreement with Ambrosiano’s late chairman, Roberto Calvi, De Benedetti agreed to step down from the bank’s board while Calvi bought back De Benedetti’s stake in the bank at a considerable premium. Calvi was found hanged in June 1982.

Prosecutors have said the deal contributed to the bank’s collapse.

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