Mazdak
04-11-08, 11:33 PM
Enrico Mattei (April 29, 1906 - October 27, 1962) was an Italian public administrator. After World War II he was given the task of dismantling the Italian Petroleum Agency Agip, a state enterprise established by the Fascist regime. Instead Mattei enlarged and reorganized it into the National Fuel Trust Ente Nazionale Idrocarburi (ENI). Under his direction ENI negotiated important oil concessions in the Middle East as well as a significant trade agreement with the Soviet Union which helped break the oligopoly of the 'Seven Sisters' that dominated the mid 20th century oil industry. He also introduced the principle whereby the country that owned exploited oil reserves received 75% of the profits.
Death
In 1962 Mattei's plane was sabotaged, but the act was discovered quite by chance by his pilot.
Rumours suggested that the CIA would not mourn his passing. Not trusting the Sifar (Italian secret service), even though it was full of his loyal supporters, Mattei constituted a sort of personal security guard made of former partisans, ENI staff - and he felt protected by them.
On October 27, 1962 on a flight from Sicily to the Milan Linate Airport, Mattei's jetplane, a Morane-Saulnier MS-760 "Paris" crashed, in the surroundings of the small village of Bascapè in Lombardy, in the course of a storm. All three men on board were killed. Together with Mattei died his pilot Irnerio Bertuzzi and the American Journalist Wiiliam McHale. The inquiries officially declared that it was an accident. The Italian Minister of Defense, Giulio Andreotti, was responsible for the accident investigation. According to a 2001 TV documentary by Bernhard Pletschinger and Claus Bredenbrock, evidence was immediately destroyed at the crash site. Flight instruments were put into acid. On October 25, 1995 the Italian public service broadcaster RAI reported the exhumation of the human remains of Mattei and Bertuzzi. Metal debris deformed by an explosion was found in the bones. There is speculation that the fuse of an explosive device was triggered by the mechanism of the landing gear.
Some facts are certain and deserve a mention:
* When preparing the film Il Caso Mattei in 1970, Francesco Rosi asked the journalist Mauro De Mauro to investigate on the last days of Mattei in Sicily. De Mauro soon obtained an audio-tape of his last speech and spent days studying it. De Mauro disappeared 8 days after his retrieval of the tape, on September 16, 1970, without leaving a trace. His body was never found.
* All the Carabinieri and Police investigators who searched for De Mauro, and consequently investigated his presumed kidnapping, were later killed. Among them the general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa.
* Tommaso Buscetta, the famous mafioso who repented, declared to judge Giovanni Falcone that the De Mauro affair was not a mafia affair. The strange thing is that the confusion created by his disappearance would have "ordinarily" compelled the mafia to get involved, discover those responsible and denounce them, or even worse. Buscetta also suggested that the cause was in De Mauro's investigations on Mattei. Gaetano Iannì, another repented mafioso, had suggested that a special agreement had been achieved between the Cosa Nostra and "some foreigners" for the elimination of Mattei.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Mattei#Death
Death
In 1962 Mattei's plane was sabotaged, but the act was discovered quite by chance by his pilot.
Rumours suggested that the CIA would not mourn his passing. Not trusting the Sifar (Italian secret service), even though it was full of his loyal supporters, Mattei constituted a sort of personal security guard made of former partisans, ENI staff - and he felt protected by them.
On October 27, 1962 on a flight from Sicily to the Milan Linate Airport, Mattei's jetplane, a Morane-Saulnier MS-760 "Paris" crashed, in the surroundings of the small village of Bascapè in Lombardy, in the course of a storm. All three men on board were killed. Together with Mattei died his pilot Irnerio Bertuzzi and the American Journalist Wiiliam McHale. The inquiries officially declared that it was an accident. The Italian Minister of Defense, Giulio Andreotti, was responsible for the accident investigation. According to a 2001 TV documentary by Bernhard Pletschinger and Claus Bredenbrock, evidence was immediately destroyed at the crash site. Flight instruments were put into acid. On October 25, 1995 the Italian public service broadcaster RAI reported the exhumation of the human remains of Mattei and Bertuzzi. Metal debris deformed by an explosion was found in the bones. There is speculation that the fuse of an explosive device was triggered by the mechanism of the landing gear.
Some facts are certain and deserve a mention:
* When preparing the film Il Caso Mattei in 1970, Francesco Rosi asked the journalist Mauro De Mauro to investigate on the last days of Mattei in Sicily. De Mauro soon obtained an audio-tape of his last speech and spent days studying it. De Mauro disappeared 8 days after his retrieval of the tape, on September 16, 1970, without leaving a trace. His body was never found.
* All the Carabinieri and Police investigators who searched for De Mauro, and consequently investigated his presumed kidnapping, were later killed. Among them the general Carlo Alberto Dalla Chiesa.
* Tommaso Buscetta, the famous mafioso who repented, declared to judge Giovanni Falcone that the De Mauro affair was not a mafia affair. The strange thing is that the confusion created by his disappearance would have "ordinarily" compelled the mafia to get involved, discover those responsible and denounce them, or even worse. Buscetta also suggested that the cause was in De Mauro's investigations on Mattei. Gaetano Iannì, another repented mafioso, had suggested that a special agreement had been achieved between the Cosa Nostra and "some foreigners" for the elimination of Mattei.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enrico_Mattei#Death