![Michele Sindona (Italian: [miˈkɛːle sinˈdoːna] ; 8 May 1920 – 22 March 1986) was an Italian banker and convicted felon. Known in](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/6/6b/Michele_Sindona.jpg "Michele Sindona - Wikipedia")
Michele Sindona - Wikipedia
Michele Sindona (Italian: [miˈkɛːle sinˈdoːna] ; 8 May 1920 – 22 March 1986) was an Italian banker and convicted felon. Known in banking circles as "The Shark", [ 1] Sindona was a banker for the Sicilian Mafia and the Vatican. Sindona was a member of the fascist Propaganda Due (#0501), a secret Masonic lodge of the Grand Orient of Italy. He was fatally poisoned in prison while serving a life sentence for the murder of lawyer Giorgio Ambrosoli.
Born into a poor family at Patti, a small comune (municipality) in the province of Messina (Sicily), to a Neapolitan father, a florist who specialized in funeral wreaths,[ 2] and a Sicilian mother, Sindona was educated by the Jesuits, and showed very early in his life an unusual aptitude for mathematics and economics. He graduated with a law degree from the University of Messina in 1942.
After landing on Sicily the Allied Forces gave important posts to the mafia, to reduce the influence of Communists and for them to organise the distribution of food aid.[ 3] Sindona began working in smuggling operations with the Mafia transporting food in trucks.[ 3] At the same time many American born Italian mafia members return to Italy, like Lucky Luciano. Sindona wrote, that in 1946 all worked in the black market, that within 6 months he doubled his capital like a Wall street banker and that he waited for Meyer Lansky, Jewish mobster and banker for the mafia, to give him a signal".[ 3]
