In the pantheon of swindlers, there is a special place reserved for Leopold Ledl. Though he had been at the game full-time for less than a decade, by the beginning of the 1970s this small, portly, dark-haired, always affable Viennese was already a legend among his peers, those who knew and had dealt with him, and those who only knew of him.
Born in Vienna in 1935, he had come relatively late to the trade. It had taken him nearly a quarter of a century to find the role that suited him best, that would lead to the making of his name and fortune. He was the only son in a poor family, grown poorer during those traumatic years of the Hitler Anschluss, World War II and its aftermath, and driven into the squalor of abject poverty like so many others in the wreckage of postwar Austria and the occupation of Vienna by the conquering Allied powers. The only opportunity that seemed open to him then was some kind of semiskilled labor. After completing his primary education, he set off into the world as an apprentice to a neighborhood butcher. It had been a choice made not because of a special talent or interest, but because it was all that was available to him. But after he sliced off the last joints of four fingers on his right hand, he knew he was not cut out to be a butcher, that the cleaver in his hands was a dangerous weapon only to himself, and that he had better look elsewhere for a career if he was to survive in the world. (Learning that, Coffey remembered Ense telling Rizzo in Munich, “You know that he had only three fingers? He lost three fingers.… What is it, he kills animals. His profession is a butcher. He makes meat.”)
He tried a dozen other trades briefly, and eventually went to sea as cabin boy, cook or whatever job he could pick up on freighters and passenger liners. Aboard those ships and in ports of call around the globe, he studied the ways of the rich at their leisure, watched the manner in which they made their way along the decks and in the salons, as they wandered with such assurance through the markets, shops, bazaars. He determined that he would find a way to be one of them. The rich had manners, exuded an air that marked them as successful, as people of means and stature. He would master those attitudes and attributes until they became part of him. But studying them so carefully, he discovered something else. If there was something for sale, there was always a buyer; and if that something seemed exotic, appeared to have some special value, the price inevitably spiraled far beyond the intrinsic worth and the avid customer would pay with little argument.
By the mid-1960s, not yet thirty, he had put his seafaring days behind him and settled in a small flat in Vienna with his new wife, a tiny, attractive, blonde woman. He was soon the father of two small daughters, was eking out a meager living at inconsequential, dull jobs while trying to find the right path to riches. In his spare time, he tinkered, drawn to the idea that he might invent something that would make that fortune. Invent he did, developing and patenting a new massage brush. It was not much, not anything revolutionary, but it did not have to be, for Ledl had realized by then that the important thing was not the invention itself but how it was parlayed.
Everywhere he went, he touted the magical properties of his new brush in glowing, extravagant phrases. If there was one thing Ledl now understood about himself it was that the magic lay not in the brush but in Leopold Ledl, in his ability to convince the skeptical. He was, someone would later say, the proverbial man who could sell air-conditioners to Eskimos in the middle of winter and furnaces to the Congolese in midsummer.
He came upon one especially fascinated listener, a Budapest-born Swiss resident named Karoly Kasco, a man who knew everybody and who saw the permutations in any good idea. Kasco invited Ledl to his villa in Aarau, Switzerland, to demonstrate his miracle brush and explain its potential to a gathering of investors. Ledl did not hesitate. He was sure he had acquired the necessary polish that would enable him to mix easily in the company of the very rich. And so in that villa in the Alps, he gave his demonstration, made his winning pitch, left with promises of financial backing for his yet unborn enterprise.
Something else happened during that trip to Aarau that was to unlock the doors that had been tightly shut against him. He met King Wammi. Once the absolute ruler of the central African kingdom of Burundi, Wammi was in Swiss exile, driven from his home and his throne by a revolution with the avowed aim of turning Burundi into a republic. But Wammi still claimed the throne, for himself and for his son, Natari V. He insisted that those who ruled in Burundi were usurpers and he was the one true and legitimate leader of his people.
Ledl sat with him through long hours of harangue, listened with sympathy, nodded in agreement, sighed in sorrow, offered to help in any way he could. King Wammi—who supplemented an already vast fortune sequestered in Switzerland by selling titles and peerages from his former kingdom to rich and gullible Europeans with a longing for position, however ephemeral—was so entranced by this compassionate young Austrian that he offered to make him, for a fee far lower than the usual one, an honorary consul of the kingdom of Burundi. A title was one of the things Ledl craved, not so much for itself but because it would increase his stature immeasurably in an easily impressed world. Still, he was shrewd enough not to bite the moment the bait was dangled before him. Wammi sweetened the offer. He would grant Ledl, as well, the power to confer the title on others and issue diplomatic passports from Burundi, car and driver’s licenses and the other amenities that come with the rank of diplomat. Ledl still did not leap at the hook. Wammi, intrigued and now anxious to win Ledl to his camp, added something. He was, he said, prepared to name Ledl his personal financial counselor. That was what Ledl had been waiting for.
Back in Vienna, no longer plain Leopold Ledl, inventor and would-be businessman, but now the Honorary Consul Leopold Ledl of the Kingdom of Burundi, financial adviser to his majesty, King Wammi, he set about exploiting what he had gained. With the money from those investors he had met through Kacso, he set up shop as Caravelle Service Company to turn the patent on the massage brush into a viable piece of merchandise and, if he wished, to export and import a wide variety of other things. He also went to work turning his new position with King Wammi and the nonexistent kingdom of Burundi into hard cash. He printed three hundred decrees conferring the title of honorary consul of the central African kingdom and proceeded to sell them in Austria, Greece, Italy, wherever he traveled, for prices ranging up to $100,000. Of course, for an additional fee, the buyer also got from the Ledl printing presses diplomatic passports, drivers’ licenses, license plates and more.
But Ledl was still not satisfied. He needed something more attached to his name than honorary consul, something that would bestow the fillip of distinction, that would proclaim him to be truly a man of standing, class and learning. So, it was worth the few thousand dollars he turned over to a friend who knew somebody who could arrange such things to receive in return a piece of parchment proclaiming him an honorary doctor of laws from the National University of Canada in Toronto. Over the next few years, other friends helped him amass a collection of degrees, and by the time he was finished he was an honorary doctor of philosophy, of theology, of canon law, with degrees from the University of Rome, from the University of the Vatican State, from Saint Thomas in Laterano, from Antoniana College and from two universities in London. And his own printing presses were turning out parchment, too, conferring honorary doctorates from universities around the world on whoever was willing to pay the price.
Honorary Consul Dr. Leopold Ledl was in business, and business was booming. Before anyone quite knew what had happened or how, he was head not only of Caravelle Service Company but also of Interterra, a shipping line operating out of Monrovia, Liberia; Westropa Construction Company of Vienna, a home building operation; Intercontinental Rami Etablissement and Etablissement Proco, both with headquarters in Vaduz, Liechtenstein, both with charters granting them the right to do just about anything they wanted, including public relations, market research and analysis, insurance, patent exploitation, banking, commerce, manufacturing. Ledl was into more ventures than anyone could count, all of which resulted in large profits to him, though most seemed to falter somewhere short of completion. There were hotels, warehouses, truck manufacturing plants in Indonesia and Malaysia, a shipbuilding operation in Spain, a home construction scheme in Greece, some mysterious deals in Ghana, Kenya, Nigeria, Zaire and elsewhere in Africa. He did not forget his magic brush and negotiated its license and sale wherever he went, was even at one time striking an agreement with Aristotle Onassis for its distribution in Greece; that deal, like so many others, faded away before the brush reached the market, but not before some of Onassis’s cash found its way into Ledl’s pocket. As his fame spread, and his fortune grew, there were some who said much of his newfound wealth was coming from gunrunning to wherever there was trouble (in association with a high-ranking American officer with the NATO forces in Europe), from stolen and counterfeit securities and currency, from financial manipulations of all kinds, and from narcotics. There was hardly an illegal activity that, according to someone, Ledl was not involved in.
If anything was certain it was that within a very few years, the Honorary Consul Dr. Ledl had become very rich, indeed, and very well connected. He had moved his family from Vienna into a luxurious wooded estate, valued at over $1 million, in Maria Anzbach, Austria, and had hired private tutors for his growing daughters. He was serving his guests the best food and wines, and the bar was always stocked with the best liquor, though he drank only milk. He was driving the best cars, traveling first-class all the way. And he even claimed a few more titles—counsel of the patriarchate of Alexandria, and counselor of the archbishopric for Central Africa.
Most important of all, he had cultivated some very important new friends, especially in Rome, to which he journeyed often on business of one kind or another. There was, for instance, the count of San Francisco, Mario Foligni, Honorary Doctor of Theology. His titles and degrees were about as legitimate as any of Ledl’s and he had come by them in much the same way. Perhaps that was what had drawn them together and turned them into close friends. Perhaps, too, it was that Foligni had the knack of emerging from unsavory episodes—and there had been a few—completely unscathed. On one occasion, checks that were part of the loot from a bank robbery had been found in his apartment. He simply said that he had no idea how they had come to be there, and the authorities accepted that explanation and never looked any harder in Foligni’s direction. On another occasion, he was suspected of having manipulated the fraudulent bankruptcy of a company in which he had an interest. The suspicion was strong enough for the court to have ordered a search of his premises for incriminating evidence. His safe was opened. Inside was a signed blessing from Pope Paul VI. The safe was closed. The investigators apologized for the intrusion and the inconvenience, and departed.
What attracted Ledl most, though, were the people Foligni knew well, people who might one day prove of considerable value to a man with foresight. Foligni worked every side of the street, maneuvered his way with ease through all strata of Italian society, could count among his friends and associates people well placed in business, government, the church, and the less savory professions. From one world, there were men like Dr. Tomasso Amato, Milanese lawyer and swindler, who specialized in bogus paintings, documents and securities, and Remigio Begni, Rome stockbroker who was not too concerned where the stocks he dealt in came from or where they went. From another world there were the commander-in-chief of the Italian armed forces and the head of the country’s tax and revenue enforcement service. A very close friend was Carlo Pesenti, cement and insurance tycoon whose fertile mind overflowed with investment schemes involving tens and even hundred of millions of dollars and who was not averse to cutting in his friend Foligni and Foligni’s highly placed friends in the Vatican for a share of the profits if they could help him bring off the deals. There was, too, Alfio Marchini, millionaire owner of Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci Hotel, a man whose left-wing sympathies had turned him into one of the major financial backers of the nation’s Communist party at the same time that his religious convictions led him into very generous support of the church and its good works and brought him into such a close relationship with those who ruled in the Vatican that he was widely known as the “The Red of Saint Peter’s.” And there were priests like Father Salvatore d’Angelo, head of a charitable organization in Naples called Maddaloni, who spent part of each week in Vatican City and who was on such close terms with the Vatican’s assistant secretary of state, Archbishop (soon to be Cardinal) Giovanni Benelli, that he could pass messages and suggestions from Foligni directly to Benelli and know they would quickly reach the right places.
Foligni ran an insurance and finance company called Nuova Sirce, with offices in Rome and Munich, and an investment firm, the Intercommerce Group, operating out of his Rome office. The nominal president of both was an American industrialist and hotel man from Bristol, Connecticut, named Joseph Vetrano, a close friend of the highest-ranking American in the Vatican hierarchy, Bishop Paul Marcinkus. Among the more prominent directors of Nuova Sirce was Monsignor Mario Fornasari, a noted Vatican lawyer with a lucrative practice representing the rich in divorce and matrimonial actions before the sacred rota and, on the side, a manufacturer and distributor of rosaries and other holy articles. He was a good man to know, for he had done many favors for people in the right places. He had, for instance, successfully represented Vetrano in a divorce case on the recommendation not only of Foligni, but of Pesenti, Marchini and Bishop Marcinkus. Of them all, Marcinkus was the one with the potential for doing everyone the most good.
Born in Cicero, Illinois, in 1922, the son of a Lithuanian immigrant window-washer, Marcinkus had early manifested an interest in a church career, had been ordained a priest at twenty-five after graduating from Saint Mary’s of the Lake Seminary in Mundelein, Illinois. His career as a parish priest was short, however. He quickly came to the attention of those in charge of the Chicago diocese and became a personal protégé of Samuel Cardinal Stritch and those who followed him in command of America’s largest Catholic enclave, Cardinal Meyer and John Cardinal Cody. All took an interest in fostering his career, steered him from the parish priesthood into church government, and particularly into the financial stratum where he seemed most at home, used their influence to situate him in the Vatican itself and advance him up the administrative ladder. Marcinkus hardly looked the part of the ascetic scholar explicating the fine points of theology. A hulking, burly man, towering more than six feet four inches and weighing well over two hundred pounds, he looked more the football player, and, indeed, in high school and college there were some who thought he could make a mark, if he desired, on the football fields or in the rugby scrums, to which he devoted much combative energy. His interests had always been more worldly than scholarly; he had a fondness for good Havana cigars, expensive Scotch, and other things temporal, including the golf links to which he adjourned as often as possible and which he toured with a score that distinguished him as no high-handicap duffer.
That awesome, even frightening aura of physical strength and power won Marcinkus the nickname in the Vatican of “The Gorilla” and won him, as well, the position of personal bodyguard to Pope Paul VI, in charge of security whenever the Pope journeyed forth from the Vatican. He assumed the responsibility of placing himself as an imposing physical barrier between Pope and populace, and he exercised the right to decide who would get to the Pope and who would not. And he was more than just a bodyguard. He was president of the Institute per Opere Religiosi (Institute for Religious Works), more familiarly known as the Vatican Bank. As such, he had virtually a free hand in directing the financial affairs of the Vatican and was, unlike all other church administrators, answerable for his decisions and actions only to the Pope himself.
Perhaps Marcinkus’s closest friend outside the church was the Italian banker, financier and industrialist Michele Sindona, whom he would later describe as “well ahead of his time as far as financial matters were concerned.” So implicit was Marcinkus’s faith in Sindona and his vision that he turned to him often for financial and investment advice and was never discouraged, never had any doubts about Sindona’s sagacity, even when later events revealed that following Sindona had resulted in disastrous losses for the Vatican. And he had no hesitation in sending others to Sindona when they were faced with financial problems. He recalled one occasion when an Italian friend was trying to sell to an American group his part ownership in an Italian bank. The deal was foundering because of the intricacies of diverse Italian and American tax laws. Marcinkus suggested a simple solution: his friend should sell his interest to Sindona and Sindona, with his international banking experience and holdings, would easily find a way around the difficulties and consummate the deal. As far as Marcinkus was concerned, Michele Sindona was a master of his craft, a model to emulate.
Just what kind of a model Marcinkus had chosen to listen to and emulate came to light in 1974 and thereafter, when the wreckage of Sindona’s adventures lay strewn across the Italian and American financial landscapes, and he was on his way to an American prison.
But, during those years when he was so close to Sindona and relying on him so heavily, could Marcinkus have suspected or known the route Sindona was traveling? Or was there reason why he ignored the whispers that kept arising? There were knowledgeable people in Italy all during those years who were very leery of Sindona, afraid to stand against him, and there was considerable evidence about just what kind of a man he was. Mario Foligni told Leopold Ledl, who had heard the stories from other friends in Italy, Germany and all over Europe, that Sindona was a merciless man, capable of ordering any act, legal or illegal, if it served his purpose, and that he controlled an organization not dissimilar to the Mafia, an organization international in scope and limitless in power. So many were aware of it, Foligni said, that Marcinkus could not have been ignorant of Sindona’s character. But there was much gossip, and it seemed to be based on fact, that explained why the bishop appeared oblivious. Sindona and Marcinkus, Foligni said, were partners in many deals that profited both, and though it could not be proved, and Marcinkus would certainly deny it if a question were ever put to him, there were indications that the two men shared a private numbered bank account at Interbanca in the Bahamas and perhaps others elsewhere.
So, Foligni said, if Ledl was interested in doing major business in Rome, the man to know and cultivate was Bishop Paul Marcinkus.
Through Foligni, then, Ledl had come into the orbit of people in power in every sector of Roman society, people whose friendship could lead to new business and great profits. And he had come into even more exalted company through another new friend, Monsignor Alberto Barbieri. (Barbieri’s identity and his relationship to Ledl were unearthed only years later, at the end of the 1970s, by two reporters for Germany’s Stern magazine. That he existed had been known; what had not been known was who he was.) Journalist and lecturer for the Vatican’s publishing house, Edizione Paoline, Barbieri was in instant rapport with Ledl, for they had much in common. Like Ledl, Barbieri had a special fondness for the better things of life and reached for them greedily. Like Ledl, Barbieri drove big, fast, expensive limousines. Like Ledl, he wore only the best clothes, his priestly vestments tailor-made in an exclusive shop in Rome. Like Ledl, he enjoyed the company of beautiful women, was seen frequently with them at the best restaurants and night spots, even had a mistress whose existence he hardly kept secret. Like Ledl, he was a doting father, providing only the best for his teen-age daughter. And like Ledl, he was more than a bit of a swindler. According to reports in Italian newspapers, never disputed or denied, Barbieri turned a fancy profit for himself and several associates in 1969 when he helped divert sixty tons of European Economic Community surplus butter from their intended destination—the Vatican’s Pontifical Relief Organization, which was planning to distribute the butter to hospitals, old-age homes and children’s shelters—to the black market. Despite an ensuing outcry, he received only the mildest of reprimands. But, then, he had powerful friends in the administration of the church to protect him, friends who had a special fondness for this urbane priest and had no intention of seeing him disgraced.
Barbieri was not slow in introducing his new friend, Ledl, into his circle, especially to those in the Vatican. He arranged for Ledl to stay while in Rome at the Vatican’s guest quarters, in room 338 of the Hotel Columbus, very close to Saint Peter’s. It was not as lavish as the Excelsior or the Hassler or the Leonardo da Vinci, which Ledl preferred, but it was comfortable and it was the Vatican’s own, which was no small thing.
Barbieri made certain, too, that Ledl was entertained well and often and by the right people. It was not long before the Austrian was on intimate terms with some of the most important and influential dignitaries in the Roman Catholic church, so close that he knew he could drop in on them without an appointment, at both their offices and private quarters, and receive a warm welcome. He could count on dinner invitations and, after a sumptuous meal, long hours of convivial and confidential conversation with the likes of Edigio Cardinal Vagnozzi, head of the Vatican’s office of economic affairs, and Amleto Giovanni Cardinal Cicognani, secretary of state emeritus, in his late eighties and oldest of all the cardinals. And a special bond seemed to grow between him and Eugene Cardinal Tisserant, dean of the college of cardinals, only a year younger than Cicognani yet still actively running the Society for the Propagation of the Faith and disbursing funds to the church’s foreign missions. Instantly recognizable by his long, white beard and patrician bearing, the scholarly, sophisticated French-born Tisserant, perhaps the cardinal closest to Pope Paul VI, appeared to be charmed by Ledl and saw in him, perhaps, a man he might one day put to good use. Whenever they met, Tisserant would grab Ledl’s shoulders, and bellow, “Ah, my friend, Johann Strauss from Vienna, is here again,” and then lead him away for some pleasant hours of dining and quiet discussion.
This was exalted company, indeed, for a once poor butcher’s apprentice turned international swindler, and Ledl luxuriated in it. He did not at first suspect that those venerated church leaders valued him for anything more than his pleasant company and his ability to tell an amusing story. He did not even think it when Cardinal Tisserant, during those afterdinner sessions in his quarters and during their meetings in the office (the only other person present an archbishop assistant to the cardinal—his name has never been revealed), began to tell him sorrowful stories of the declining state of the Vatican’s treasury, of how Bishop Marcinkus had made a series of ill-considered investments that had cost the church untold millions of dollars at a time when there was such a drain of the Vatican treasury, what with the need to support the foreign missions and the commitment to shore up the stagnating Italian economy, the shaky banking structure, the collapsing lira and so save the church-supported Christian Democratic government.
It was only when, according to Ledl, Tisserant dropped the subtleties and pretenses that the Austrian understood why he had been so welcomed, understood at last the role in which he had been cast. Early in 1971, in Tisserant’s office, only the archbishop with them, the cardinal concluded one of the tales of the church’s woes and turned directly to Ledl. As Ledl related it later to Joe Coffey and the FBI’s Dick Tamarro, Tisserant asked whether his Austrian friend had any suggestions or ideas as to how the church might find the means to solve some of its pressing monetary problems, and those of Italy, as well.
Ledl had plenty of ideas, but not the kind he cared to put to a man like Cardinal Tisserant in the heart of the Roman Catholic church. Despite his own cynicism, grown naturally from his dealings with men of standing and power, and despite the cynical observation of his friend Foligni that “they trade in everything; the Vatican couldn’t care less,” Ledl was still in awe of the person he was with and the place they were in. He hesitated.
“No ideas at all, my friend from Vienna?” Tisserant pressed.
Ledl could not bring himself to give voice to those ideas.
Tisserant sighed, looked at the archbishop. Surely, he said, Ledl, with all his vast experience in such matters, must know how to obtain a great many securities that would assist the Vatican and the Italian nation.
Ledl asked what kind of securities?
Tisserant laughed. “First-class securities, of course,” he said, “in large American companies.”
Ledl sensed the drift of the conversation, but he wanted to be sure. He said it might be difficult to obtain such paper.
“If they are counterfeit?” Tisserant asked mildly.
Now, Ledl knew. He asked what amounts was the cardinal talking about?
Close to a billion dollars, Tisserant said. To be precise, the figure they had in mind was $950 million. Half, he said, would be channeled through Bishop Marcinkus and the Vatican Bank, to make up for some of the losses the Vatican had suffered as a result of Marcinkus’s investments and to provide a base for new and better investments abroad in the future. The other half would go to the Bank of Italy. As a result of its lengthy labor troubles and bad investments, it was in arrears more than $4.5 billion. The infusion of these new assets would be a major step in helping the bank through this crisis. Ledl would be put in touch with the governor general of the bank to work out the arrangements with him as to how delivery to the bank would be made.
Weren’t the cardinal and the others, Ledl asked, at all concerned what might happen if it were discovered that the Vatican was dealing in counterfeit American securities? It was one thing for a businessman, or even a large company, to venture into such treacherous waters. But for an institution such as the Vatican to do so.…
Tisserant waved that away. He was not at all concerned, he said, nor were any of those he had discussed this with. They all agreed that the American government would never accuse the Vatican of knowingly dealing in counterfeit stocks and bonds. In fact, if it was discovered that such paper existed in the Vatican, the United States would undoubtedly believe the church had been taken by some unscrupulous swindlers and so would secretly step in and make good the losses.
If he could, indeed, find such first-class counterfeit merchandise, Ledl asked, how much was the church willing to pay for it?
If Ledl could make such a delivery, which the cardinal and his friends were sure he could, Tisserant said, then the Vatican and the Bank of Italy would pay him and his sources sixty-five percent of the face value, or about $625 million. Of course, Ledl and his people must understand that they would be expected to kick back a quarter of that amount, or about $150 million, to Tisserant, Marcinkus and the others who had developed this plan. Still, that would leave Ledl and his people about $475 million. That should be enough to pay for their troubles.
Ledl considered it. It was, of course, irresistible. He told Tisserant he thought it might be possible.
Tisserant wanted to hear a stronger and more confident word than possible (and in the months to come, whenever they met, and Ledl said there were at least ten more such meetings, the cardinal used all his powers of persuasion to impress on Ledl the urgency of completing the arrangements without delay).
Ledl said, yes, he thought it more than probable that something could be worked out. Since the Vatican, in the persons of Cardinal Tisserant and Bishop Marcinkus, wanted American securities, the best place to go for them was to his friends in the United States.
Ledl was certain he knew exactly the American who could fill the church’s order. Manuel Richard Jacobs.