Fircks

Palazzolo

I moved your comments about Vito Roberto Palazzolo to the talk page. Please keep discussions on Palazzolo there instead of the main article. Thank you. - Mafia Expert (talk) 14:52, 28 May 2009 (UTC)

And is it too much to ask to put your comments at the bottom of the thread? - Mafia Expert (talk) 22:51, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Update

After parsing your sizable edit which included large deletions and new material, I concluded that it includes too much opinion while removing and discounting references. The article space isn't a forum, and the Talk page is the proper place for these types of discussions where you hammer issues out with other editors.

best regards, --UnicornTapestry (talk) 08:37, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for your intervention as it is important, in the spirit of transparency and verification of sourcrs, which I demand for Palazzolo, that I keep it so myself. My sizable edit was sizable because so much of what Don Calo wrote was demonstrably wrong and, with docuentary evidence (or at least the lack of it in his defamations) I can prove it. So - I don't know what to do? How can one stop a living person from being defamed by someone who describes himself as an "expert" but uses, merely, newspapers as his source material? Can you help me? I would gladly speak with Don Calo to describe, piece-meal, this very complex case to him.

Kind regards - Alexander Fircks Fircks (talk) 10:58, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I just left a note on the article's talk page. I have passing familiarity with the SA press and if you can compile citations regarding Mr. Palazzolo, I'll be happy to see the evidence inserted and do what I can to defend it (keeping in mind that others can override me.)

Leave me sources (citations, references) on my talk page and avoid the article's main page for the moment. If you can justify your case, I'll try to help. I can tell you're frustrated and emotional, but try to relax for a day or two as we sort this out. Okay? If you're right, we'll try to make things right.

I hasten to add that acceptable references must be solid, either news articles or court documents to override previous citations, and not blogs or forums.

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 11:57, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Hi. I asked a professional research editor (in SA) to glance at your case. Can't be sure anything will come of it, of course, but I kept my promise to follow through. You may want to provide an eMail address in Wikipedia in case the editor wants to contact you.

best regards, --UnicornTapestry (talk) 00:24, 16 February 2011 (UTC)

Did you ever get a response from the SA research editor? Thanks --Fircks (talk) 10:51, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Your recent edits

Hello. In case you didn't know, when you add content to talk pages and Wikipedia pages that have open discussion, you should sign your posts by typing four tildes ( ~~~~ ) at the end of your comment. You could also click on the signature button located above the edit window. This will automatically insert a signature with your username or IP address and the time you posted the comment. This information is useful because other editors will be able to tell who said what, and when. Thank you. --SineBot (talk) 09:22, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

Vito Roberto Palazzolo ‎

Welcome to Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to contribute to the encyclopedia, but when you add or change content, as you did to the article Vito Roberto Palazzolo ‎ , please cite a reliable source for the content of your edit. This helps maintain our policy of verifiability. See Wikipedia:Citing sources for how to cite sources, and the welcome page to learn more about contributing to this encyclopedia. Thank you. CanadianLinuxUser (talk) 14:28, 10 February 2011 (UTC)

what the hell, dude...

*cough*. This is a warning. Don't do it again; if you don't understand why that kinda stuff is unacceptable, you probably shouldn't participate here. Choyoołʼįįhí:Seb az86556 ^{> haneʼ} 10:45, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Thanks dude

Thanks dude for insightful comment. And a warning too! Most kind! Tell me, dude, what it is I don't understand? What I do understand is that an innocent man will be defended against the moronic inferno that constitutes the free Press and it's mindless dudes delivering threats. Fircks (talk) 13:43, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

This is to notify you that I have started a discussion at COIN about you.--Bbb23 (talk) 12:11, 13 February 2011 (UTC)

Vito Roberto Palazzolo

You mentioned that you had started a discussion regarding Palazzolo at Conflict of Interest. I could not find it. And I do not know where to go with my complaint (which editor can adjudicate) because it keeps getting removed.

Thank you

Fircks (talk) 18:54, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

ANI Notice

I have opened a discussion at the Administrator's Noticeboard for Incidents about your recent post at Talk:Vito Roberto Palazzolo, which may or may not constitute a Legal Threat. If it is your intent to signal that legal action may be pursued regarding this article, I'd ask that you immediately retract the threat and discuss the matter - editors are routinely blocked from editing for making legal threats, as indicated in our policy on the subject (linked above). If that is not your intent, it may be wise to clarify your meaning; talk of lawyers always causes concern. Your request for an arbitration case, while it may be premature, also serves to highlight your concerns about the article - and that will likely be discussed as well. The thread may be found at Wikipedia:Administrators'_noticeboard/Incidents#Vito_Roberto_Palazzolo_et_al. Thank you. UltraExactZZ ^Said ~ Did 15:42, 8 March 2011 (UTC)

Palazzolo

I have replied to the case on the Admin Noticeboard (see below) as you suggested. I hope this makes sense and thanks for you arbitration. Wikipedia can be complicated for the new applicant. I merely want a fair hearing - nothing more - because this case has been going on for such a long time and is very complcated and injurious to a living man who, for the most pert, is unable to respond and be heard. Thank you - Alexander Fircks http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Administrators%27_noticeboard/IncidentArchive679#Vito_Roberto_Palazzolo_et_al 41.3.128.156 (talk) 10:32, 3 April 2011 (UTC)

It's been suggested at WP:ANI that WP:BLPN is the best place to raise this issue. Mjroots (talk) 19:21, 9 April 2011 (UTC)

Palazzolo

Hi, I left you a response on my talk page, but since it's buried, I'll repeat it here:

Your initial complaint received attention here. I can tell you did something in arbitration, but it may have already been archived as may have the entries on the CoI notice board. Be assured that administrators are watching the Palazzolo article.

best wishes, --UnicornTapestry (talk) 10:48, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your news. Am checking out.

Regards

Fircks (talk) 17:17, 10 April 2011 (UTC)

Please stop editing ANI archives [1]. Archives are just that - a permanent record of past conversations. If you really must, start a new topic at ANI. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 12:39, 24 April 2011 (UTC)

Do be careful of archives. I mistakenly edited one a few weeks ago… my only excuse was brain damage.

--UnicornTapestry (talk) 11:43, 29 April 2011 (UTC)

Talkback

Hello, Fircks. You have new messages at UnicornTapestry's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Good morning. I left you a message on my page earlier. I gave some additional thought to a research editor, which might help document factual evidence here and help with your book there. The agency I have in mind is SA and multilingual. I can vouch only the quality of work, not whether they'd can, could, or would take on such a project. Either send me a message (Toolbox on left of my page) or set an eMail address so I can forward information. Be certain to let me know either way so I can look for it.

regards, --UnicornTapestry (talk) 07:02, 2 May 2011 (UTC)

Palazzolo suggested BLP

I have opened a discussion at Palazzolo suggested BLP, etc --Fircks (talk) 16:24, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

I posted an opinion on the BLP Notice board. --UnicornTapestry (talk) 19:32, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Question

Hi, why do you wan't to write a book on Vito Roberto Palazzolo. What is it about him that is so interesting? Just curious! Joyson Noel ^{Holla at me!} 16:32, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

For many reasons, primarily because it is a case without any resolution, i.e. none of the allegations stand up in court (many of them are actually fraudulent) but they won't stop issuing new ones (or old ones rehashed), so I'm thinking, with all this smoke, where's the fire? The answer is either a) there's a conspiracy out to get Palazzolo, or, b) Palazzolo is guilty of SOMETHING. He might be a seriously maligned man, or not. Either way, it's very important to get it right. I guess I just got drawn in. And I write, so what better thing to write about! --Fircks (talk) 16:44, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for the concise response. One last question! Do you think ethnic prejudice has anything to do with the fabricated allegations, or witch hunt? Joyson Noel ^{Holla at me!} 17:11, 15 June 2011 (UTC)

And thanks for your response. I have spent a lot of time ruminationg on possible motives, and there are many in Sicily and Switzerland. Being Sicilian he was an easy target, for everyone. Every Mafia family could pin him, if they so wished. And the Swiss were pissed off with him because when he sidestepped the attempts to have him extradited and tried in Italy, the Swiss had to wash their dirty linen in public, in Switzerland. After which Swiss banking was never the same. And, Palazzolo is an aristocrat whose family looked down on the scum of the Mafia, quite rightly, so when they got the chance they hammered him. So ethnic prejudice? Yes, certainly. He was the perfect scapegoat. Bear in mind too that the Italian judiciary is VERY corrupt. --Fircks (talk) 12:15, 16 June 2011 (UTC)

Formal mediation has been requested

The Mediation Committee has received a request for formal mediation of the dispute relating to "Vito Roberto Palazzolo". As an editor concerned in this dispute, you are invited to participate in the mediation. Mediation is a voluntary process which resolves a dispute over article content by facilitation, consensus-building, and compromise among the involved editors. After reviewing the request page, the formal mediation policy, and the guide to formal mediation, please indicate in the "party agreement" section whether you agree to participate. Because requests must be responded to by the Mediation Committee within seven days, please respond to the request by December 2, 2011.

Discussion relating to the mediation request is welcome at the case talk page. Thank you.
Message delivered by MediationBot (talk) on behalf of the Mediation Committee. 16:41, 6 September 2011 (UTC)

Request for mediation accepted

The request for formal mediation of the dispute concerning Vito Roberto Palazzolo, in which you were listed as a party, has been accepted by the Mediation Committee. The case will be assigned to an active mediator within two weeks, and mediation proceedings should begin shortly thereafter. Proceedings will begin at the case information page, Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Vito Roberto Palazzolo, so please add this to your watchlist. Formal mediation is governed by the Mediation Committee and its Policy. The Policy, and especially the first two sections of the "Mediation" section, should be read if you have never participated in formal mediation. For a short guide to accepted cases, see the "Accepted requests" section of the Guide to formal mediation. You may also want to familiarise yourself with the internal Procedures of the Committee.

As mediation proceedings begin, be aware that formal mediation can only be successful if every participant approaches discussion in a professional and civil way, and is completely prepared to compromise. Please contact the Committee if anything is unclear.

For the Mediation Committee, AGK [•] 20:33, 6 September 2011 (UTC)
(Delivered by MediationBot, on behalf of the Mediation Committee.)

Hi Fircks: I'm so sorry for the extreme delay in beginning your mediation. I've posted my initial comments, and my initial question to both of you, on the case discussion page. Yours, --Tristessa (talk) 03:06, 8 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Vito Roberto Palazzolo

Dear Fircks: I just wanted to gently remind you to contribute your views to the Palazzolo mediation this weekend, as you'd previously mentioned. Please let me know if there's any way I can be of assistance. Yours, --Tristessa (talk) 16:44, 22 October 2011 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Requests for mediation/Vito Roberto Palazzolo

I was reassigned the case, I will take a look at where things are at and try to get up to speed before the end of the weekend. Thanks for your patience. --WGFinley (talk) 06:37, 30 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks Wgfinley - looking forward to resolving this BLP. --Fircks (talk) 07:39, 1 December 2011 (UTC)

Any news on Palazzolo? who seems fated first of all to be attacked by his BLP "author" and then ignored by the mediators. An interesting exercise in web democracy? For the sake of verity, justice and everything we all aspire to, please DO something!--Fircks (talk) 08:03, 15 December 2011 (UTC)

Hello. You have a new message at Wgfinley's talk page.

Palazzolo

I've added my take on getting discussions restarted, you can check it out here, thanks!

--WGFinley (talk) 01:48, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I wanted to make sure you had outlets available, what you put on my talk page though should probably go in the mediation discussion --WGFinley (talk) 06:19, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

Were you ready to move on with this again or do you have a timeframe? Don Carlo seems to be getting pensive about proceeding, I would like to keep him in the mediation. --WGFinley (talk) 17:19, 15 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes, I will be ready in a day or two. Having exhorted you guys to hurry and then dragged my feet, I apologise. I have been ultra busy and I wanted to know what Palazzolo has to say about the points I made on his behalf. Thanks for your patience. --Fircks (talk) 05:09, 16 January 2012 (UTC)

Palazzolo Mediation

Have not heard from you for some time and since I marked the case as stale. The case has been stale for several months so, per the other party's request for review I have agreed to close the case as unsuccessful at this time. I would encourage you to utilize other means of dispute resolution should the dispute continue or file another case. Feel free to contact me with any questions or issues. --WGFinley (talk) 14:20, 2 April 2012 (UTC)

Noseweek

Hi Fircks, Check this out. Hope it helps.

DIARY OF A DON

Issue #8, 1st June 1994

• The new government is currently reconsidering the continued residence in South Africa or Mafia banker Vito Palazzolo, who entered South Africa illegally in 1986, after absconding from a Swiss prison. He had been jailed for laundering the proceeds of the Mafia’s heroin sales in America.

• He is now said to be assisting one of Europe’s largest casino operators, Casinos Austria, in their bid to enter the South African gambling market.

• What might persuade the new government to allow the Sicilian to remain in SA? Has he, too, been the subject of a secret indemnity deal?

• Palazzolo has claimed that, as a “hot” money banker in Switzerland, he made powerful friends in German intelligence; in customs and the diplomatic corps; in the KGB; in the arms blackmarket; in the international gem trade. Already early in his career he had South African clients.

THE DIARY OF A DON

1981 – Sicilian-born Vito Casamire Salvatore Maria Palazzolo, known as Roberto, was employed in Lugano at Finagest, a business that specialised in money laundering. The Italian Mafia was one of Finagest’s more important customers.

Also in 1981 – Palazzolo was shopping around the banks of Switzerland, looking for R300 000 in South African rand notes – with which to pay for an undeclared consignment of diamonds. As Judge Harms would later remark in his Commission report: “One can only guess what the origin of the diamonds was, and what the destination of the rands.”

April 1984 – P. was arrested by the Swiss police in April 1984 on a warrant issued by the Italian court investigating the biggest Mafia case of all time. Before he could be extradited to Italy, P. admitted to his involvement in Finagest, resulting in his being jailed in Switzerland.

30 June 1986 – Mr Peet de Pontes, an attorney and Nat MP for East London, was briefed to see Palazzolo in La Stampa prison. The Sicilian wished to discuss the possibility of coming to South Africa. This was, however, not the first visit P. had had from South Africa: Prison records reveal that only 12 days earlier, on 18 May, he was visited by Marcel and Ester Grunfeld of Cape Town. He had got to know them some years before, in his dealings with the diamond dealers of Antwerp.

16 September 1986 – De Pontes again visited P in his cell to inform him that he could come to Ciskei, from where he would be able to move around freely in South Africa, and from where they could then “fix up the South African side of things”.

27 October 1986 – De Pontes made a followup visit to P. to inform him that President Sebe had granted him temporary residence in Ciskei. Again, only a week earlier, P. had had a visit from Eugen Meir Grunfeld (also known as Marcel, after a long residence in Belguim). This time, according to the prison register, Mr Grunfeld identified himself as the holder of Israeli passport no. 1554559, domiciled in Nicse, Israel. De Pontes noted in his diary that P. had asked him to establish whether it was possible that he might be extradited from South Africa, and to discuss “housing and other matters” with his “Jewish friend in Cape Town”.

24 December 1986 – P. absconded from prison and flew to SA, using the identity – and passport – of a fellow prisoner.

May 1987 – P. used the fanciful assumed name, Von Palace Kolbachenko, for the first time, when he opened a bank account for his new company, Papillon. (The company name was a rather obvious joke about his status as a great prison escapee). Shortly thereafter he formally assumed the new name by deedpoll in Ciskei, in order to hide his true identity from the SA authorities. He thought they would only grant him a permanent residence permit if they remained ignorant of his criminal past. Next he established the Von Palace Kolbachenko Trust to hold most of his South African assets.

31 January 1988 – P. was arrested by the SA Police on a charge of having illegally entered South Africa.

3 February 1988 - P. signed a general power of attorney in favour of Meir Grunfeld to act as trustee of his assets world-wide. Two days later he agreed to return to Switzerland to serve the balance of his jail sentence.

January 1989 – P. returned to South Africa to testify in the trial of Peet de Pontes on various charges arising from his illegal entry into South Africa.

10 May 1990 – appointed Ciskei ambassador plenipotentiary by brig. Gqozo.

25 June 1990 – bought Paraguay passport no E008192, issued in the name Robert von Palace Kolbatschenko. In it he is described as “farmer resident in Asuncion”.

9 July 1990 – P’s fraudulently obtained RSA permanent residence permit was entered in his new Paraguay passport by the Namibian Ministry of Home Affairs, making it valid for residence in Namibia.

10 July 1990 – obtained a 12-month SA business visa, issued in Windhoek, and entered in his Paraguay passport.

1991 – Meir Grunfeld travelled to Antwerp on a special mission to arrange a $6 million loan, offering a consignment of diamonds as security. At the same time that Grunfeld was visiting his old friends in Belgium, another member of P’s circle – and a regular visitor to Cape Town from Lugano – advocate Mario Molo, was registering a new company, called Corlis AG, in Liechtenstein, with himself as the only nominee shareholder and director. Corlis’s true shareholders remain anonymous, of course. All we are sure of is that Corlis AG’s South African representative was Mr V R Palazzolo, and that Mr Grunfeld was arranging loan capital for this company. Corlis was planned to be one of those rare foreign companies eager to invest in South Africa – with finrands of course.

14 July 1991 – married Tirtza Grunfeld, Meir’s daughter.

29 July 1991- P’s Paraguay passport endorsed by the SA Department of Home Affairs in Cape Town; “Permit for permanent residence valid till 31 Oct 1991”

25 October 1991 – P. issued with a new Namibian multiple-entry visa, valid till 30/6/93. The visa did not have the required photograph attached – in the space provided, the word “waived” was written.

9 December 1991 – P. informed by Namibian Ministry of Home Affairs “not to attempt to come to Namibia until further notice”. The Ministry launched an inquiry into how his previous visa had been obtained.

21 December 1991 – P returned to SA on a three week visitor’s visa “to sell his farm and to pack”. He told the press he would be leaving SA for the last time on 7/1/92. “I have had to sell everything. After what has happened to me I am not surprised that no-one in the rest of the world likes S-Africans,” he said, before stating that he intended settling in Europe.

1993 – buys more property in Cape Town.

1994 – reported to be spending most of his time in Plettenberg Bay.

next month: A Cute KLittle Bankhaus in Bisho. n

Copyright © 2012 www.noseweek.co.za

AND

A CUTE LITTLE BANKHAUS IN BISHO

Issue #9, 1st September 1994

In the 80s, at the time of the international banking freeze on South Africa, were tons of drug dollars laundered through Ciskei to pay for apartheid South Africa’s “hot” trade in arms, oil and other international sensitive commodities? Perhaps even flown in plane loads to Ciskei’s “International” airport, to be banked at a mysterious small bank with mafia and spy connections?

Or was the mere threat of such competition from Ciskei-based operators enough to persuade the South African conventional banking sector to “wash” the dirty money themselves - leaving buccaneer hopefuls from Pretoria like Albert Vermaas and Eugene Berg with no role, except as scapegoats for a show of law enforcement?

Might the Geheime Kamer, a soundproof room in Volkskas Headquarters in Pretoria (where, according to Bob Aldworth’s description, billion rand currency transactions were done, unrecorded) have had something to do with it?

The search for the answers to these questions, and the fate of two of the characters, who featured in the Ciskei story, Albert Vermaas and Vito Palazzolo, prompts us to take a closer look at the history of a cute little bankhaus in Bisho, which started out as The Bank of Bisho and ended grandly as Eurobank Ltd.

Vermaas and Palazzolo appear to have little in common. Vermaas has been on trial, on and off, for the past two years for fraud and other commercial offences. Palazzolo, the Sicilian-born money launderer and banker to the Mafia who came to Ciskei in 1985, continues to find safe haven in South Africa and now travels on a bought Paraguayan passport which describes him as a “farmer from Asuncion”.

But they did once have at least one thing in common: an ambition to set up a bank in Ciskei.

Documents exist showing that, in the mid-1970s, the circle of senior officials and conmen surrounding the Minister of Information, Dr Connie Mulder (Dr Eschel Rhoodie’s political boss), considered setting up an “independent” bank in the homelands as a channel for covert funds.

At about that time David Kimche, described as Mossad’s leading force in Africa, and Israel’s real-life equivalent of Le Carre’s spy character, Smiley, appeared on the scene.

Kimche became a close friend of South Africa’s Secretary of Information. Dr Rhoodie, when Rhoodie headed one of South Africa’s most important secret projects: code-named Operation David, it encapsulated the secret collaboration between the Apartheid State and Israel. The pebble in this David’s sling was, of course, The Bomb.

Also involved in Operation David was Johannesburg businessman David Abrahamson who, besides being founder of the ill-fated National Growth Fund, was both an undercover intelligence agent and an expert in foreign currency matters. His trail would take us to Thesaurus, a small, shady bank in Switzerland with a big secret mission, but that's another story.

Many believe that the assassination, by professional hitmen, of Dr. Robert Smit in October 1977, had something to do with it. Smit had been treasury adviser to the Minister of Finance, Dr. N. Diederichs, for many years and was also SA’s representative at the IMF in Washington. Only weeks before his death he believed he was under surveillance and feared assassination by a foreign intelligence agency - he thought either American or Israeli. He told friends he had discovered something which the Minister of Finance had done which profoundly disturbed him.

In the ‘80s it appeared that Ciskei was being run as a joint operation by South African and Israeli Intelligence. The more so since most of the operatives appeared determined to prove spy novelist John LeCarre’s thesis that the perfect spy is also a perfect conman and thief. As the years pass, the evidence mounts, with some of the most recent contributions coming from former Israeli intelligence officer Ari Ben-Menashe, and the Goniwe and Sebe inquests.

Back then, the talk was of a Ciskei clearing house for hot money from Europe and America – money too hot even for Switzerland to handle - to provide South Africa (and indirectly, Israel) with the foreign currency desperately needed to finance their arms and nuclear programmes.

But first, a brief recap on the life of Vito Palazzolo, sometimes also known as Roberto [For more detail, see nose8]:

In 1962 Vito Palazzolo, just 14 years old, left his birthplace, Palermo, Sicily, to become a waiter in a restaurant in Switzerland. Within three years he learned not only to speak English, German and French, but also how to anticipate his customers’ needs. For a further three years he did stints in the casino business, the travel agency business, and in the foreign exchange department of the Deutsche Bank. In the seventies he went into the international gem trade, airport duty-free shops, and shipping.

In short he had accumulated the qualifications required to be a dealer in Hot Money and a banker for the Sicilian Mafia.

In 1976 he paid a flying visit to Bangkok and Hong Kong, the drug and financial clearing houses of the East, before spending a final short stint at the Deutsche Bank. He was ready to launch into “fringe” banking in Switzerland – doing the sort of currency deals that official bankers would rather not do for fear of landing in jail.

Typical customers of such “banks” are arms and drug dealers, spies, businessmen evading tax; politicians hiding undercover commissions or bribes; also radical organisations and nations funding civil wars, revolutions or The Bomb.

Palazzolo claims friends from a wide circle – German intelligence, customs, the diplomatic corps; the KGB; as well as in the arms black market and the international gem trade.

In 1981 he was employed in Lugano at Finagest (Swiss acronym for “Financial Management”), a business specialising in money laundering.

The Italian Mafia was one of Finagest’s more important customers.

Also employed at Finagest were two currency runners who would later be identified in the New York “Pizza Connection” trial, in which Palazzolo and a score of Mafiosi were charged with running the biggest heroin smuggling operation in history.

One of the more senior clients for whom Palazzolo laundered drug profits while employed at Finagest was Oliviero Tognoli, whom, Palazzolo would later claim, he thought was an Italian industrialist laundering the proceeds of under-invoiced steel exports. But, in the same period, Palazzolo is recorded as having had contact with well-known Mafia figures in Germany, the USA and Sicily itself. Tognoli was one of his co-accused in New York's famous Pizza-connection trial.

1981 also found Palazzolo shopping around the banks of Switzerland looking for R300 000 in South African rand notes - to pay for an undeclared consignment of diamonds. As Judge Louis Harms would later remark in his Commission report: “One can only guess what the origin of the diamonds was, and what the destination of the rands.”

Palazzolo did have diamond connections in South Africa: his brother Pietro was operating as a buyer in Lesotho, while Pietro’s former employer in Europe, Antwerp diamond dealer Meir Grunfeld, an Israeli citizen, was resident in Cape Town.

Palazzolo’s career as a money launderer in Switzerland ended when, in April 1984, he was arrested by the Swiss police on an Interpol warrant. He was wanted in Rome as one of the accused in the biggest Mafia trial in Italian history. In a desperate bid to avoid extradition to Italy, Palazzolo admitted to his involvement in Finagest’s money-laundering transactions with the Mafia. As a result he was tried, found guilty and jailed in Switzerland on a lesser charge than those facing him in Italy.

• * *

In September 1984 – while Palazzolo was still awaiting trial in Switzerland – President Lennox Sebe of Ciskei was persuaded by his corrupt Minister of Health, Dr Hennie Beukes (formerly an officer in the SA Defence Force), to grant the sole concession to start a Ciskei bank to his friends from Pretoria, W A J “Willie” Coetzer and G C “Gerrie” Botma. Both had been connected to the Security Police and National Intelligence.

Dr Beukes also arranged other Ciskei concessions for an interesting collection of Israeli citizens, most of them recently retired military officers.

Coetzer and Botma, apparently still with modest ambitions, decided to call their bank The Bank of Bisho, after Ciskei's capital "city" then still being built by the South African government. But the bank was not quite ready to open its doors for business - it had no capital and the pair were not, after all, bankers. (Botma used to run a little shop in Pretoria selling surveillance equipment). But business prospects looked up , when, on 23 January 1985, Max Hilpert, a director of Finagest, Palazzolo’s old money-laundering company in Lugano, arrived in Bisho, capital of Ciskei, as a member of a top-secret Swiss-Israeli delegation.

The leader of the delegation was Dr Josef Bollag, director in Switzerland of the United Mizrahi Bank – a bank which has strong financial and intelligence links to both Israel and South Africa. (Misrahi directors are an interesting bunch, and include our old friend, Spymaster David Kimche).

In that week in January 1985, the banking delegation headed by Dr Bollag secretly consulted with Ciskei officials (many of them presumed to be South African intelligence operatives) on whether and how to turn Ciskei into a tax and banking haven – with bank secrecy laws more impenetrable than those of Switzerland itself.

The names of those who attended the week of talks in Bisho in January 1985 appear in a top-secret Ciskei Government memorandum which has never before been made public.

The memorandum names the foreign delegation as: Prof Achtnicht, Mr Amman, Mr E. Bernhardt, Dr Josef Bollag (who, besides being a director of the United Misrahi Bank, was also Ciskei’s representative in Zurich), Mr Goldblatt, Mr Max Hilpert, Mr Lundstrom, Mr Merz, Mr Peled, Mr Porchet, Mr Reuben Sghan-Cohen, Mr Urs Walter, Mr Weber, and Mr Zonderegger.

David Spitzer, representing the diamond dealing families of Antwerp was accompanied by Messrs Panzer, Smith and Trobl. The delegation met with Ciskei’s Law Reform Committee; with officials responsible for the Swart Report on Taxation; with senior officials of the Ciskei Treasury; with the directors of the Ciskei People’s Bank; and, finally, with members of the Ciskei cabinet.

It is not known what was decided at these meetings, but a Ciskei spokesman did claim in a press interview not long afterwards that an agreement had been signed with “a Swiss consortium” which, he said, would inspire confidence and give the proposed new financial dispensation in Ciskei “international credibility”.

At The Bank of Bisho, things seemed to be on the move; its board was expanded to include Finance Minister Barend du Plessis’ former business partner, Hercules J Both (as chairman) and Ciskei’s Minister of Finance, Ray Mali. Other new board members included L.P.S. “Hoppie” Roets (who, ten years earlier, had fronted for secret projects run by Eschel Rhoodie’s Department of Information and would later become a preferred supplier of provisions for Unita) and Omri van Zyl, member of a firm of attorneys that had previously acted for Pretoria architect and Info frontman, Oscar Hurwitz.

Tantalisingly, not long afterwards, a contract was awarded to US citizen Gary Morgan to build a Ciskei international airport at Bisho with a runway suitable for intercontinental airliners. It was such an obviously absurd idea - if considered in terms of conventional cargo and passengers – that it was easily dismissed as just another bit of African insanity. (And of course, Morgan was persuaded to use his dollar profits, converted to finrands, to save the Minister of Manpower, Pietie du Plessis, and the Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank, Jan Lombard, from imminent bankruptcy by investing in their ill-fated property company, Natprops – more African insanity.)

The Ciskei government’s next step was logical enough: it did a deal with another US citizen, John Robinson, to set up Ciskei International Airways (CIA). When Morgan’s runway was completed, Robinson flew in two out-of-date Convairs that had already earned their weight in gold on the Iran-Contra arms run. They never took off again. And nobody has bothered even to collect the rent. Just another big of insanity? Or had they fulfilled their purpose?

But back to banking. A year passed after the bankers’ secret meetings in Bisho and then, in June 1986, attorney Peet de Pontes, Nat MP for East London, was summoned to Switzerland to consult with a new client, Vito Palazzolo, in his cell in La Stampa prison in Lugano. This would not be the first visitor from South Africa Palazzolo had welcomed in his prison cell. Twelve days earlier he’d had a visit from his old friend, Antwerp diamond dealer Meir Grunveld, who had recently emigrated to South Africa.

Palazzolo instructed his new attorney to investigate the possibility of his officially emigrating to Ciskei, giving him unlimited access to South Africa.

In October Palazzolo was informed that President Sebe had personally agreed to grant him temporary residence rights in Ciskei. Sebe was keen that Palazzolo should help establish a national bank in Ciskei. The Sicilian declared it "a privilege and an honour to be asked to help in this way."

At the same time, however, Palazzolo asked De Pontes to discuss problems concerning his possible extradition from South Africa, housing and other matters with his “Jewish friend in Cape Town” - Meir Grunveld.

On Christmas Eve, 1986, Palazzolo absconded from his Swiss prison and, assisted by an unnamed foreign diplomat, crossed the border to Germany, from where he flew to South Africa using a false passport.

Within a month he was trying to organise the shipment of arms supplies, embargoed in France, to South Africa. There was a delay, however, when he found that his contact in France was away – on a secret mission to Iran.

Palazzolo would later explain that he knew about the arms trade “only from a financial point of view”, and that it was as a banker that he had got to know various people involved in these transactions.

He invited a friend and business partner in Spain to visit Ciskei to help set up a bank, to be called Europa Bank, and to help with arms for South Africa. His Spanish friend was also an agent for French arms manufacturer, Thompsons.

In mid-1987 Palazzolo assumed the name Robert Von Palace Kolbachenko – an extravagant invention – to hide his true identity and, more importantly, his criminal past. Curiously, he also suggested this name related somehow to a distant Jewish Russian aristocratic ancestor. He took to wearing a gold star of David pendant. (He is, in fact, of ordinary, Catholic Sicilian descent.)

On 22 September 1987 Palazzolo’s new Ciskei company, Papillon, made formal proposals to the Ciskei Government to set up a Ciskei National Bank which would take over the functions then still performed by the South African Reserve Bank in Ciskei. It was also proposed to draw up a Ciskei Banking Act and to set up a banking authority. Papillon was to control the bank, provide the necessary expertise and draft the necessary legislation.

On instructions from Palazzolo and his Hong Kong business partner, Mr Yeng Ping Kok – also named in the records of the New York Pizza Connection trial – a Singapore attorney drafted a Monetary Authority of Ciskei Act, based on Singapore’s banking laws. It was passed into law by Ciskei’s parliament.

But all appeared to have been for naught when, on 31 January 1988, Palazzolo was arrested by the SA Police and returned to prison in Switzerland.

Five months later, First Ciskei Bank changed its name to Eurobank Ltd. All the other old directors resigned, to be replaced by Gerald Joseph Grieveson – a British citizen and an accountant based in Pretoria, Anthony St John – a young, South African-born member of the British House of Lords, and various Pretoria businessmen that did not signify much. (They would in any case later say they knew nothing about the business.)

Eurobank Ltd was, however, itself controlled by another company, Eurobank Controlling Corporation, where, more significantly, Pretoria advocate – and founder of Allied Bank – Dr Eugene Berg headed the list of directors. Berg’s closest friend at the time was Theo van Wyk, who was soon to be appointed South Africa’s new Registrar of Banks.

Most significant, however, was the majority shareholder of the Controlling Corporation: an entity curiously named Whales Offshore Holdings (Ciskei). It had been incorporated by attorney Omri van Zyl on 21 September 1987, with a share capital of four thousand R1 shares. Omri held one share; the rest were controlled, through various trusts, by Pretoria attorney Albert Vermaas. Vermaas’s connections in cabinet and senior military circles were legendary. His attorney partner, Alwyn Marx, had been seconded to become full-time organiser and fundraiser for Minister of Foreign Affairs, Pik Botha’s parliamentary constituency. Vermaas, too, had an airline which undertook covert international missions for the government.

But again, only six months later, disaster struck: the illegal cash pyramid with which Vermaas and Berg had funded their banking operation collapsed. Vermaas claimed to have been relying on backing from top military and government circles. If so, they had obviously let him down badly. In any case, these claims were now vigorously denied. But that, of course, is another tale.

Footnote: Since those heady days, Israeli master spy David Kimche has not entirely departed from the South African scene, even if his role as one of the masterminds of Iran-Contra did keep him very busy. On 21 November 1989, after a visit to Israel by Johannesburg businessman Gerry Simon, Kimche – now as MD of the United Mizrahi Bank – agreed to act as “fiduciary & intermediary” for a US$600 million secret foreign loan for South Africa. The loan was being raised by Alwyn Lombard, corrupt brother of former Deputy Governor of the South African Reserve Bank, Dr Jan Lombard. The loan did not materialise and resulted in Alwyn Lombard being convicted for fraud. n

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Saskloppers (talk) 07:13, 28 April 2012 (UTC)Sas Kloppers