July 1993 the last week manager of Ravenna, between clean hands and the collapse of the Ferruzzi. The judicial investigations are closed, questions no. By 'Sole-24 Ore on, "July 22, 2003
of Marco Magrini
From our
RAVENNA - Via Romolo Gessi prepares to become street Raul Gardini. Not tomorrow, which marks the tenth anniversary of the death of the most controversial businessman of Italian history, but in a few months. "I do not like anniversaries - Mercatali Vidmer explains, the mayor of Ravenna - but I know that this city feels the desire to pay tribute."
We see that the mayors have the pulse of the city. Ravenna Why is not someone who does not remember that managers with the infectious smile, greeting everyone in the street and demanded to maintain the ancient capital of the Roman Empire, the head and the heart of the second Italian private industrial group. "Even now we do not believe that we have killed - Department ensures Maria Teresa, who owns a fabric shop - why we have seen a man with as much joie de vivre." More or less the same say the news dealer, the dealer's records, the tobacconist, the keeper of the City. Which I have not yet recovered from the surprise at the drop of Ferruzzi, less noisy than that of the Roman Empire at the hands of barbarians, but so full of consequences.
exactly ten years from that storm that befallen Ravenna, after family intrigue, disaster management, litigation and showdowns in the government statement, the two wonders of Ravenna represent two unresolved questions: Why Gardini took his own life? Because the Ferruzzi group has been dissolved?
MONDAY. On 19 July of '93 was hot, hot. Rather than the summer sun, the climate of the country was red-hot "Clean Hands" investigation, that stood on the front pages with a daily bulletin of arrests and interrogations on the rumors. "Advised him to stand in France, in the waters to cool off," says Silvio Fabbri, a lawyer and old friend. But after two or three days of frenzy in the Riviera, Gardini returned to Milan. "He said he did not like to do the figure of the fugitive." Opening of the Milan Stock Exchange, the securities to be Peak Ferruzzi, the day before, former President Joseph Garofano Montedison had declared that "the '92 budget was false." E Gardini, who also was fired well before the leadership of the group - 7 June of '91, on his birthday - had nothing to complain.
The hunt had seemed an unthinkable affront to him that he had taken the reins of the group to the disappearance of her father Serafino. More so that she arrived in a strange moment: the first eight months following receipt of 2.805 billion by the dissolution of the joint venture Enimont, Gardini had left - in a gesture of dissent for the defeat imposed on him - all the offices of the group. After a month of reflection, was willing to go back to the command. But the brothers-Arthur, Frank and Alex said, no thanks. Rejected its proposal to purchase the Ferruzzi and dismissed her sister Ida, wife of Raul, with 505 billion and an agreement: Raul should have used some of that money to settle the case Bertini. Pino Berlin was a former employee Ferruzzi in Switzerland, using loans from the group with one hand, the other had funded (a system called back-to-back) to cover two incidents 89: soy (when the Chicago Board of Trade imposed Ferruzzi to a bloodbath because of speculative positions in question) and Victoire (The French company would secretly join Fondiaria, then attacked by the takeover bid of Suez Ferruzzi faced by investing in cross-Jean Marc Vernes). Gardini did: from Berlin took over the shares of the Cross with him parked. Then bought by the majority of the Sci Vernes, deferring to an entrepreneur with the newly Gardini Ltd. But his dream was only one: go back to having the Ferruzzi.
TUESDAY. The Chairman Gabriele Cagliari of ENI, in San Vittore Enimont the case, committed suicide at 9.40. "He was shocked - insurance should be Ballestrazzi, another longtime friend - as well as two months before he was struck by the suicide of the former French premier Pierre Bérégovoy, he knew well: "I do not know if I'd have all that courage," he said. " In the afternoon, Gardini will meet again with lawyers De Luca and Flick, who confirmed that Antonio Di Pietro has not yet agreed to meet him to hear his spontaneous statements. "He felt powerless - yet Fabbri said - and complained:" What can I try? I ask Sama documents, but he gives them to me "." Carlo Sama, husband of Alexandra, was the dolphin Gardini, and then asks place after the divorce. In Ravenna, where everyone knows where the time ran a furniture shop in Via Antica Zecca, speak of it as a modern Iago, who stabbed behind the leader of the Moor of Venice. "I do not I have no doubt - says a former manager of the group - that Sama has managed the divorce in order to bring the Ferruzzi to the spheres of politics. Politicians who had not quite digested the rudeness of Gardini, at the end of the story Enimont. But the politicians did not have to turn the estimation of too impetuous Gardini.
as evidenced by a manuscript found by 'Sole-24 Ore "[and reproduced here in pdf format.] '88 Gardini had received from De Mita and Occhetto - or by majority and opposition -" sufficient guarantees "on tax cuts as a result the conferment of the Montedison chemical activities of the joint venture. But then colliding twice with the Parliament's Nyet, he lived as an intolerable affront. Rome did not like the attempt to climb Enimont Gardini, which is made useless by the seizure of the actions decided by Judge Curt Diego (later convicted of corruption for this). Nor is the famous shot - "The chemistry I am" - with which he applied to the role of deus ex machina of an industry that gave employment to 89 people 177mila. Today I 133mila.
WEDNESDAY. Pink returned to the microphone of the judiciary. I already told the evening news of abstruse operations back-to-back to plug the hole in the soy and also the indefinite tangent Enimont. "When I arrived in Milan - Hole says Paul, a former member of Serafino and former president of the industrial Ravenna - Raul found a broken and confused. I convinced him to call Angelo Vianello, his crew, and have him prepare the boat for the next day, in Marina di Ravenna. She was afraid of prison and the bad impression internationally. But above all, knew that he would never get his Ferruzzi. Mediobanca did not want. "
Raul Gardini and Enrico Cuccia is respected but not loved. The day of climbing Montedison - already a key weak due Filodrammatici, after the takeover of the Mario Schimberni Fondiaria - Mediobanca was put under the protection of the Ferruzzi group. With a three-page document dated February 4, 1988, Gardini Mediobanca agreed to consult on any strategic move in the program. When he arrived at maturity, the two have quarreled seriously only twice: when Gardini was appointed chairman of the directors proposed by refusing Fondiaria Cuccia, Gardini, and when he sold half of Fondiaria Camillo De Benedetti. Too bad that Mediobanca was the queen of the game. Shortly before the release of
Gardini, the Ferruzzi had 19.061 trillion lire in debt gross (7,800 net), Raul had in mind to sell the Concretes and had already explained to the family plan to move the control group in France, dilute and pocketing 700 billion. For two years after the divorce, the trial was put Calcestruzzi shopping in Greece, and Italy has remained in control and debt share rose to 31.5 trillion. "I remember with horror the day the fax machine began to spit out dozens of letters," says another former manager of the Ferruzzi. "They were the banks, we revoked the trust and asked to return their debts. In those circumstances, any group would be missed. "
THURSDAY. Nothing and no boat Marina di Ravenna. It is now certain: the arrest warrant is ready, it will be signed tomorrow. Gliel'hanno lawyers said. The cigarettes go away one after another, along with memory, perhaps ever admitted to mistakes, the missed opportunities, the betrayals. If one is dressed in the legend of jaunty, able to make war on the bowsprit of the boats so as to New Zealand strong powers in the capital, is because he knows he can not go back, that he could never go back on his word. Gardini is shaken. But Idina calms and encourages it to return that night in Ravenna, the capital of his world.
Ravenna, 1980. When the quarantasettenne Raul took his reins, the Ferruzzi invoiced $ 3 trillion, 80% and 20% with trading with the industry. Eleven years later, after the acquisitions Montedison (paid 2.5 trillion), Beghin Say, Cerestar, Lesieur, Koipe and Central Soya, invoiced 17 thousand billion: in Italy, Ravenna was second only to Turin. But now the Ferruzzi was no longer the same. "One day in May two months before his death - said Roberto Michetti, former Director-General of Gardini Srl - told me that the Ferruzzi family had offered to come back. I asked him if he was happy and he replied: "I thought it would come earlier." I think he meant that the situation was too compromised. " But we tried anyway.
May 21 at sunset, Gardini, Sama, the Ferruzzi, Sergio Cragnotti and a bevy of consultants were in Corso Matteotti in Milan for the final act. The proposal for a third to Ferruzzi, in Gardini (which brings its Srl) and Cragnotti (C & P). Gardini the dispute. The Ferruzzi to be accepted by all, except riaquisire a position if things go well. When the night seemed the deal concluded, Gardini adds a condition: the support or at least the neutrality of Mediobanca. Cragnotti disagrees. But in the aftermath Sama is sent via Filodrammatici. After a dramatic week of silence, a Saturday morning, the President of the Comit Luigi Fausti call to Gardini. It lets him know that the answer is no. The commissioner Ferruzzi is a little later, on June 4, with the act of surrender signed by Sama that lays its arms at the feet of the banks. "The greatest part of those loans - will defend itself 12 days after Gianni Zanda, president of the San Paolo di Torino, the first Italian bank creditor - was paid in respect of operating companies with positive cash flow, which is able to meet its commitments. " But back does not return. Never.
FRIDAY. Outside the window, Belgaum in the square in Milan, there is a jackhammer in action, with all its cargo of decibels. After reading the newspapers, without a shower and breakfast, Raul Gardini put a wall between himself and the world without anyone hear the detonation. Suspected of running it. Two years later, the Court dismisses the hypothesis of murder. The respondents from Ravenna Sole-24 Ore turn up their noses. Idina, who meanwhile has made peace with the brothers, made erratic statements on the matter. But friends and closest associates have no doubts about the authorship of this gesture. An act related to the dissolution of the Ferruzzi group, which has since been dismembered and sold in pieces: Even Citigroup, the first recipient in absolute terms, but without adhering to the rescue plan has not lost a single penny. But the gesture of a man who, to put it in a nutshell, he hated to lose. And maybe you did not want to point the finger on the rest of the Ferruzzi family, as he recently told the financier Sergio Cusani, the biggest "victim" of the process Enimont, which was not a friend of Gardini.
But that silence is a hard choice, because the others do not will never understand. This incredible human and family went away with a space in the history of Italy, but leaving open small curiosities that might help to write it. Why Enimont has been excluded from the process the crime Curt's court, though he was relevant? Why Gardini was guilty of corruption, if the first payment of the bribe Enimont was done three weeks after his dismissal? And if he was involved, what was this really Enimont who has left behind three suicide? (There is also Sergio Castellari, an official of the State Holdings). Because the back-to-back operations were canceled in '91 and then reappear in the budget Montedison of '92? And then - would conclude the man in the street - why throw away the wealth in the wind, in this way?
"If the family had not split - Hole sighs, as a good Ravenna - the Ferruzzi would still be there." The headquarters general of the empire would be where he was. At number 20 Via Romolo Gessi.
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