The former chairman of the world’s oldest bank was accused Monday of ordering “an act of intimidation” against a top aide — right before his shocking death in a plunge from a third-floor office window in Siena, Italy.
It was the latest twist in the saga of a death that was initially deemed a suicide — but in which the victim’s wife suspected foul play as the bank, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, was reeling from scandal, as previously reported by The Post.
An Italian parliamentary commission said Monday that ex-chair of Monte dei Paschi Giuseppe Mussari sent goons to rough up the bank’s communications chief David Rossi in 2013, but didn’t intend to have him killed, the Financial Times reported Monday.
A man named Gabriele Ceccherelli was accused of organizing the nasty job and selecting the attackers, who were not named.
The matter is being referred to prosecutors, since it is not up to the commission to probe Mussari or Ceccherelli, said chairman Gianluca Vinci, a lawmaker from Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s ruling party.
Mussari strongly denied the allegation to Italian TV, saying he would move to protect his rep in court, according to the FT.
On the night of March 6, 2013, Rossi plunged from a window at the bank’s headquarters and died about 20 minutes later.
A new forensic assessment concluded that he was physically assaulted by at least two people before the fall.
CCTV footage showed up to two men checking out the body before walking away without informing the authorities, the FT reported. And a note with the words “I have done something stupid” was discovered in Rossi’s office at the time.
A witness statement cited by the commission claimed that those behind the alleged plot has been “afraid Rossi might talk,” according to the Financial Times.
It was not clear what information they feared he might reveal.
The death came during a challenging time for Monte dei Paschi. Mussari had driven the bank’s 2008 $7.5 billion takeover of Banca Antonveneta in a deal many analysts viewed as overpriced.
Monte dei Paschi was also involved in risky derivatives that took major losses during the financial crisis that year.
In October 2014, Mussari and two other Monte dei Paschi executives were convicted by Italian authorities for obstructing regulators and misleading investigators on the bailed-out Italian bank’s finances in the wake of the acquisition of Banca Antonveneta.
As for Rossi’s death, it was initially treated as a suicide by Italian authorities — a conclusion his family long disputed. Two separate investigations into the incident were closed in 2014 and 2017.
A parliamentary inquiry in 2022 criticized the original investigation, citing what it described as bias toward the suicide theory and a failure to adequately pursue other possible explanations for Rossi’s death.
Rossi was one of three people in the banking industry whose deaths were labelled suicides from 2013 to 2014, as The Post reported. In each case, the victim had ties to a global banking scandal, leaving more questions than answers about the circumstances surrounding their deaths.
The man had worked closely with Mussari for more than a decade, first handling communications for the Monte dei Paschi foundation before joining him at the bank when he became chairman in 2006.
Just 15 days before Rossi’s death, investigators searched Rossi’s home and office, as well as Mussari’s residence. The communications chief had not been formally placed under investigation.
Mussari was sentenced to seven years and six months in prison in 2019 in a separate case involving false accounting and market manipulation.
The conviction was overturned on appeal in 2022, and Italy’s Supreme Court upheld his acquittal the following year.
Neither Mussari nor Ceccherelli had been placed under criminal investigation in connection with the new allegations as of Monday, according to Italian media reports.
The Post sought comment from Mussari through his former defense firm, from Vinci and Rossi family attorney Carmelo Miceli through their respective offices, and from Monte dei Paschi and prosecutors in Siena.