Gold dust gets in Italian eyes

Press, 28 June 1983, Page 21

Gold dust gets in Italian eyes

The Italian public imagination has been captured by a search for millions in hidden gold at a former Austro-Hungarian fortress in South Tyrol, only a few miles from the Brenner Pass. The gold is supposedly part of 60 tons stolen by Nazis from the Bank of Italy’s reserves in 1943. It is the kind of story Italians specialise in and call the “great dust,’’ meaning that it consists of a vast number of particles, some true, some false, with a tendency to obscure vision. The technique of creating a great dust is often used to discredit, ridicule, or throw off course a particular examining magistrate whose inquiries are becoming dangerous. In this case, the victim might or

From

PETER JAROCKI

in Rome

might not be a young Trento magistrate, Carlo Palermo, who has begun to uncover an international arms and drug trafficking racket. In outline, the gold story runs as follows. In the autumn of 1943 the Germans did, in fact, store away stolen Bank of Italy gold bars in the Habsburg fortress. Some was transferred by the Germans to Switzerland but most was returned to the Bank of Italy by the Americans in May, 1945. However, in 1978, a specialist Milanese company obtained permission to look for missing gold at the

fortress, which is now a musicians’ storehouse for the Italian Army. The interest of the Milanese firm was aroused shortly after the flight of Hans Kappler, former head of the SS in Rome, from the hospital wing of Rome’s Celio Prison. It has been suggested that Kappler was allowed to escape in exchange for information given to Italian intelligence officers about the gold. The Milan company’s search went on in great secrecy for four years until magistrate Palermo found out about it two months ago while talking to two of the numer-

ous suspects in custody — one being a big-shot arms dealer and the other a former colonel of the Carabinieri and the intelligence services. Judiciary letters (an obligatory warning to someone that he is under criminal investigation) were sent to four people, two Italians and two Germans. It later transpired that one of the Germans had died in Rome last year. The possible charges include aiding and abetting Kappler in his escape, corruption, and attempted theft of gold. The Italians, Luigi Cavalloni and Otto Griesser, are the two engineers in charge of the gold search. The Germans, Karl Hass and the late Harald Embke, were both officers in the German Army at

one time. Cavalloni is reportedly adamant that he has identified a mass of gold of four cubic metres in an underground shaft of the fortress. It has been suggested that he might have found not the remnants of the Bank of Italy’s reserves but some other gold the Germans hid there. For example, a former Minister of Defence, Bito Lattanzio, has stated that the gold which Kapler mercilessly stripped from Roman Jews has never been found. In a few days everyone will know whether the gold exists. Cavalloni has asked the authorities for permission to start digging on the location of his find, a former munitions store. Copyright — London Observer Service.