Licio Gelli

Licio Gelli (Italian pronunciation: [ˈliːtʃo ˈdʒɛlli]; 21 April 1919 – 15 December 2015) was an Italian Freemason and businessman. A fascist volunteer in his youth, he is chiefly known for his role in the Banco Ambrosiano scandal and in the Bologna massacre. He was revealed in 1981 as being the Venerable Master of the clandestine Masonic lodge Propaganda Due (P2). This would lead to him getting arrested in Switzerland in 1982. He managed to escape from prison the next year, but eventually agreed to surrender him back into the custody of Swiss authorities for a short period of time in 1987. From 1996 until his death in 2015, Gelli remained mostly under house arrest at his home in Arezzo, Italy.

Early life

Gelli was born in Pistoia, Tuscany. During the 1930s, Gelli, then a seventeen-year-old student at a liceo classico in Pistoia, was expelled from all schools in Italy after slapping a teacher. He subsequently left as a volunteer to fight in Spain with the Fascist brigades supporting Generalissimo Francisco Franco. It was in the battle of Malaga that his brother Raffaello died. The youngest recruit in his contingent, he was decorated by Franco himself.

Gelli also volunteered for the Blackshirts expeditionary forces sent by Mussolini in support of Francisco Franco's rebellion in the Spanish Civil War. He served as liaison officer between the Italian government and Nazi Germany, and participated in the Italian Social Republic with Giorgio Almirante, founder of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI).

After a sales job with the Italian mattress factory Permaflex, Gelli founded his own textile and importing company.