Just after 8 o’clock on the morning of July 23, 1993,
an ambulance was called to the elegant eighteenth-century Palazzo Belgioioso,
just behind the Scala Opera House in Milan.
A man had shot himself in the head. That man was Raoul Gardini, the charismatic
entrepreneur who had dreamed of creating a great Italian chemical hub and who
had, only the year before, been the toast of Italy
as the chairman of the syndicate that sponsored Il Moro di Venezia, the first
Italian yacht to reach the finals of the America’s Cup.
In the early 1990s, Gardini was
one of more than 2,500 business leaders and politicians entangled in the Tangentopoli (Bribesville) scandal in which Italy’s political parties were
accused of taking bribes from industry. Prompted by his fear of imminent arrest
and disgrace over what came to be called the Enimont affair, Gardini was also
the 12th person to commit suicide in the wake of the Mani pulite (Clean
hands) investigations by the pool of judges of the Prosecutor’s Office in Milan. Although the
attempt to create the Enimont joint venture between Montedison, Gardini’s
private chemical company, and ENI, the state energy company, had failed, ENI
paid out more than $2.5 billion for Montedison’s 40 percent stake in the
venture. This vastly exceeded its worth and became the object of enquiries.
It was alleged that Montedison had used this sum
described in the newspapers as ‘the mother of all kick-backs,’ to pay out more
than $90 million in illicit kickbacks to leading politicians, including two
former prime ministers (denied, of course), in order to fund their parties.
Gardini and his associates were accused of falsifying the company books to
cover the fraud. Just three days before Gardini’s death, Gabriele Cagliari, the
chairman of ENI at the time of the scandal, was found dead in his prison cell
in Milan, where
he had been held for 134 days while investigations were made into his part in
the Enimont affair. He had tied a plastic bag over his head.
The rise of Gardini, who was
born on a farm in Ravenna
on June 7, 1933, to corporate fame and fortune had been meteoric. After
graduation from agricultural college, he went to work for Serafino Ferruzzi, a
self-made man who had created an empire in grain and cement. Through his considerable charm, driving ambition and business
panache, Gardini was soon part of the company’s top management. In 1957, he
married Idina, Ferruzzi’s eldest daughter, and in 1979, after the death of his
father-in-law in a plane crash, he took the helm of the group.
He moved quickly and aggressively to expand the group
globally through a strategy of diversification. The high point came in 1986 when Gardini led the
takeover raid on the chemical giant Montedison and acquired the insurance colossus
Fondiaria. Within a time, under his direction, the family-controlled group
employed 52,000 people and had more than 200 plants around the world. Its turnover
was second only to that of Fiat.
By 1991, Gardini wanted to hand over control of the
Ferruzzi group to his children. The rest of the family did not agree and
Gardini was relieved of all his corporate powers, although he is reported to
have departed with a golden handshake estimated at $380 million.
It was, however, Gardini’s
successor at Montedison, Giuseppe Garofano, who, following his arrest and
extradition from Switzerland,
blew the whistle and revealed to investigators all they wanted to know about
the company’s part in the Enimont conspiracy. Prosecutors issued arrest
warrants for Gardini and four other Ferruzzi executives, including Sergio
Cusani whose subsequent trial for having organised and distributed the bribes
was sensational and kept Italians glued to their TV sets for days.
In the aftermath of Gardini’s death, his widow
publicly stated that she did not believe her husband had committed suicide and
that she had ‘many doubts’ about his death. She described him as a ‘born
fighter’ and someone who ‘never gave up.’ She alleged he was ‘being blackmailed
and seriously threatened.’ It was also reported in the press that the pistol
from which the fatal shot was fired was on a bedside table and not beside the
body. Police found a purported suicide note in Gardini’s handwriting addressed
to his family in which he simply wrote ‘thank you.’ One expert’s report
concluded, however, that the note had been written many months before the
shooting. Other reports asserted that the butler may have moved the gun away
from the body. Whatever the case may be, the question remains, if Gardini
didn’t fire the shot, who did and, above all, why?
