An Unlikely Lecturer

The speaker was a thin, quietly dressed man looking older than his 55 years. His lecture consisted of 36 minutes of platitudes about the virtues of capitalism and the need for freer international trade and investments. At the end, the 43 University of Minnesota students who had turned out on a snowy day gave him perfunctory applause.

Yet the lecture had one remarkable aspect: the fact that it occurred at all. The speaker was Michele Sindona, the once reclusive Italian financier who is being sought for fraud by the Italian government. A mere two years ago, Sindona controlled a banking and real estate empire comprising scores of companies in Europe and the U.S. Just how big the empire was at its zenith probably was known only to Sindona, but his personal wealth was then estimated at $450 million.

Today nothing seems to be left. All his Italian companies either are being liquidated or have been sold to pay debts. Sindona says that he has also disposed of his holdings in three U.S. firms that constituted the last remnants of his domain: Talcott National Corp., a financial concern, and Argus Inc. and Inter-photo Corp., makers of photographic equipment. Late last year Sindona fled from Milan and after intermediate stops settled in New York, where he moved into the St. Regis-Sheraton Hotel --then, complaining that he found holes in his bedsheets, switched to the Pierre. From his suite there, he is fighting attempts by the Italian government to extradite him and put him on trial on charges of falsifying the books of one of his banks and causing the bankruptcy of some of his companies by fraudulent practices.

Current Situation. Although Sindona is rumored to have money stashed away in secret bank accounts, he claims that he is living on loans from friends. He apparently has hit the lecture circuit for public relations purposes; he says he does not accept fees. Besides the University of Minnesota, he has appeared at Columbia and U.C.L.A. Sindona warms to his audiences ("I enjoy being around young people because then I feel young"). He denounces the evils of socialism and expounds at length on the evolution of multinational companies into "cosmo-corporations." But he has not turned chatty about his personal affairs. When one University of Minnesota student asked about his current situation, Sindona replied: "I think the people here are not interested in me."

Italian judicial authorities are vitally interested in Sindona: two arrived in New York last week to compare notes with officials of the local U.S. Attorney's office. Their mission: to try to unravel completely the story of Sindona's downfall. It is known that several of his companies engaged in risky and ultimately disastrous speculation in foreign exchange and commodities. In early 1974 New York's Franklin National Bank, 22% owned by Sindona, confessed to heavy losses, starting a train of events that ended in its liquidation. Shortly afterward, Sindona lost control of Banca Unione and Banca Privata Finanziaria in Italy, along with Societ`a Generale Im-mobiliare, the real estate firm that owns Washington's Watergate complex; he had to surrender his holdings as collateral on a bailout loan from Banco di Roma. Last month Italian government-appointed liquidators seized control of Fasco AG, Sindona's Liechtenstein-registered holding company: they found detailed records of no fewer than 43 businesses from Liberia to Panama, including some that no one had suspected Sindona controlled. The liquidators' discovery was the most revealing to date about Sindona's tangled affairs, and it means that the full details of his evaporated empire may soon come out.

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