ABSTRACT: On the basis of documents made public in the United States, the scandal of the bribes paid by the Lockheed company for the purchase on the part of the Italian Air Force of C-130 Hercules transport aircraft has exploded. Marco Pannella specifies his accusations against the Investigative Commission and the President of the Republic Giovanni Leone: the accusation is addressed against that criminal organization, the centre of which are the D'Ovidio Lefebvre brothers, who are unanimously known to be be politically protected by Leone.

(Radical News - March 1977 from: "Marco Pannella - Works and speeches - 1959-1980", Gammalibri, January 1982)

The Italian press insists in maintaining that the group of radical members of Parliament states that President Leone is guilty of a series of offences, and that it asks the Investigative Commission to charge him with such offences. This is completely incorrect. If there is a direct polemic on our part, this is directed against the Commission. We stated and supported with evidence that the Investigative Commission deliberately omitted to see and to judge something evident: a gigantic criminal association to the detriment of the defence, the independence and the honesty of the State; in addition to several other criminal purposes. We stated and supported with evidence that the centre of this criminal association and of this single criminal plan, developed and accomplished in the course of ten years, are the D'Ovidio Lefebvre brothers, who are unanimously known to benefit from a single, preminent friendship and political protection: that of Senator President Giovanni Leone. We pointed out and supported with evi

dence that there has been an unquestionable omission of investigation against the D'Ovidio Lefebvre brothers, especially in the Lockheed affair, but not only in that.

On the basis of information that proved to be absolutely correct, yesterday we diffused a new document of the Investigative Commission. Absolutely exact: there is a cheque for Lit. 50 million, there is the signature of Antonio Lefebvre, there is the name of the remittee, Reverend Monsignor Prignon, there is the date, May 1972, and the rank of Monsignor Prignon is also correct. On the basis of this information and of another information, found to be incorrect, yesterday Radical News formulated the hypothesis, in a dubitable, conditional form, of the existence of direct relations between Monsignor Prignon and President Leone.

At this stage, considering the denials coming from the Vatican and the Quirinale, the document acquires a greater pertinence with our criticism and our entreaties toward the Investigative Commission.

The document becomes more serious. The D'Ovidio Lefebvre brothers appear to be clearly connected to those Vatican interests that are the basis of the "sack" of Rome. Let us ignore, for the moment, the bizarre coincidence for which, a few months after President Leone moved into the Quirinale, his habitual friend, partner and table-companion Antonio D'Ovidio Lefebvre was involved in a fishy financial and real estate operation just a few metres away from his apartments. For the moment, we are not interested in the fact and we do not consider it relevant.

But is was imaginable, and at this stage probable, that the criminal association, of which no one will dare deny the existence and the characteristics, soon found its natural allies in that Vatican finance which, from Monsignor Marcinkus (2) to Virgillitto to Sindona (3), and other prominent Italian and international banking and financial institutions, represent the cancer of Italian finance, it too, as the city of Rome, subjected to the systematic sack of capitalist, pseudo-Catholic and clerical robbers, indissolubly connected. The Vatican denial is a confirmation, dangerous for those who provided it, of the reasons for which the Vatican's press organ has had no hesitations, in these last days, in massively interfering in the Lockheed affair, supporting the defendants and the suspects. After this denial, it is possible and dutiful, as far as we are concerned, to confirm our indication to the Investigative Commission, and in the meanwhile, pass this document on to the attention of the competent ordinary magi

strate, for fiscal fraud and violation of urbanistic laws. In an affair like this, characterized by many complicities to the crime, nothing could be more natural than complicities in investigation.

Translator's notes

(1) Quirinale: one of the seven hills of Rome. In the past it served as the official residency of the popes, then of the King of Italy and currently of the President of the Republic

(2) Monsignor Marcinkus: Cardinal in charge of the Vatican's financial affairs.

(3) Michele Sindona (1920-1986): Italian financier. Between 1969 and 1974 he built a financial empire; charged with bankruptcy, he fled to the United States. Involved in a new financial crash, he was arrested and convicted. He died in prison, of a probable suicide.