Freemasonry in EU institutional corruption
Freemasonry in EU institutional corruption
Meanwhile in Italy magistrates were still investigating Sindona’s fraudulent activities and also the events behind the murder of the liquidator of his financial empire… Milan magistrates ordered a police raid on [Gelli’s] villa outside Arezzo… Among the documents left behind at the abandoned villa were the membership files of
P2. A list of members drawn up by Gelli contained the names of nearly a thousand of Italy’s most powerful men. One prosecutor’s report later stated: ‘Lodge
P2 is a secret sect that has combined business and politics with the intention of destroying the country’s constitutional order.’ Among the names were three members of the cabinet including Justice Minister Adolfo Sarti; several former Prime Ministers..; 43 MPs; 54 top civil servants; 183 army, navy and air force officers including 30 generals and 8 admirals; 19 judges; lawyers; magistrates; carabiniere; police chiefs; leading bankers; newspaper proprietors, editors and journalists; 58 university professors; the leaders of several political parties; and even the directors of the three main intelligence services. All these men, according to the files, had sworn allegiance to Gelli, and held themselves ready to respond to his call. The 953 names were divided into 17 groupings, or cells, each having its own leader.
P2 was so secret and so expertly run by Gelli that even its own members did not know who belonged to it. Those who knew most were the 17 cell leaders and they knew only their own grouping” (Knight, p269-278). Francesco Siniscalchi’s reward from internationally-recognised Italian freemasonry, for his attempt to expose
P2 illegality, was expulsion.
The 1984 parliamentary enquiry, discussed in Short, p532 et seq, found “Gelli hosted frequent
P2 meetings where the politics of destabilisation and subversion were discussed by police chiefs, army generals, security service bosses and appeal court judges. He knew this was not orthodox freemasonry: ‘Philosophy has been banished, but we felt we had to do this in order to tackle only solid and concrete arguments affecting national life’…
[and in a note to absent members of P2, Gelli stated] ‘Many have asked… how we should behave if one morning we awoke to find the clerico-Communists had seized power, whether it would be best to resign ourselves to passive acquiescence, or to take on well-defined positions – and if so, on the basis of what emergency plan’” [p543]. “The 1970s were some of the blackest years in the history of modern Italy. The state was torn apart by left- and right-wing terror, but many of the horrific acts originally blamed on the Left (from the Red Brigades to the Communist Party) turned out to be acts of black propaganda by
.... [ P2]. These included the ‘Italicus’ train bombing in 1974, in which 12 people were killed, and the 1980 Bologna Station massacre in which 85 died. In both events
P2 had a guiding control…” [p545].
The P2 case demonstrates how freemasonry’s respectability, secrecy and routine engagement in covert activities can be used by the unscrupulous as “cover” for corrupt activities.
It should be appreciated that the investigation of P2 was partial and short-lived, and many of its participants remained powerful figures in public life. Some former
P2 Lodge members, such as Silvio Berlusconi, have risen to even higher levels. (Another member was Mr Gaetano Vita, identified on the
P2 membership list as ispettore caporipartizione foreste del ministero dell’Agricultura; I seem to remember this name from sector letters which the Court sent to Italy (addressee?), in respect of “tobacco audit” missions.)
The P2 affair also demonstrates how rank-and-file freemasons can be misled by their own hierarchies, as to other masons’ earlier wrong-doing. In March 1987 the English freemasons’ magazine “Masonic Square”
incorrectly described the P2 lodge as “bogus… a spurious body not affiliated in any way to the Grand Orient” [Short, p548]. The same absence of openness and accountability which is one of freemasonry’s great strengths vis-à-vis the “profane” (non-masonic) world, is also one of its greatest internal weaknesses.
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