David Rossi — a 51-year-old communications director at Monte dei Paschi di Siena, the world’s oldest bank — was found dead in an alleyway beneath his third-floor office window in the 14th-century palazzo that served as the bank’s headquarters. His death came as the institution teetered on the brink of collapse.
A devastating security video shows Rossi landing on the pavement on his back, facing the building — an odd position more likely to occur when a body is pushed from a window.
The footage shows the three-story fall didn’t kill Rossi instantly. For almost 20 minutes, the banker lay on the dimly lit cobblestones, occasionally moving an arm and leg.
As he lay dying, two murky figures appear. Two men appear and one walks over to gaze at the banker. He offers no aid or comfort and doesn’t call for help before turning around and calmly walking out of the alley.
About an hour later, a co-worker discovered Rossi’s body. The arms were bruised and he sustained a head wound that, according to the local medical examiner’s report, suggested there may have been a struggle prior to his fall.
But the death was ruled a suicide, to the disbelief of Rossi’s widow, Antonella Tognazzi. She was quoted in the Italian press as saying her husband “knew too much.” She staged public demonstrations and hired a lawyer to investigate her husband’s death.
Among the evidence Tognazzi pointed to was the alleged suicide note, in which Rossi referred to her as Toni. He never called her Toni, she said.
Two days prior to his death, according to his wife, Rossi sent a cryptic email to the bank’s CEO, Fabrizio Viola. “I want guarantees of not being overwhelmed by this thing,” he wrote. “We would have to do right away, before tomorrow. Can you help me?”
It remains a mystery what specifically Rossi thought could “overwhelm” him just before his death, but many have speculated that he was referring to Monte Paschi’s troubled financial position.
Rossi was a close confidant of former bank president Joseph Mussari, who was the driving force behind Monte Paschi’s 2008 $7.5 billion takeover of Banca Antonveneta. Many banking analysts agreed at the time that Monte Paschi paid too much in the acquisition that Deutsche Bank financed.
The same year as Rossi’s death, European and US regulators began to probe what would become known as the Libor scandal, in which London bankers conspired to rig the London Interbank Offered Rate — an overnight interest rate that determines the interest banks charged on mortgages and auto and personal loans across the globe. It also determines the rate that banks like Monte Paschi pay for loans like the one it used to finance the purchase of Banca Antonveneta. The scandal would cost international banks — most notably Deutsche — nearly $20 billion in fines.
Additionally, Monte Paschi got involved in risky derivatives that took heavy losses during the financial crisis of 2008. The esteemed bank, founded 20 years before Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic, was being investigated at the time of Rossi’s death for its handling of billions in these risky derivative bets involving Deutsche Bank and Merrill Lynch.
In October 2014, Mussari and two other Monte 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. In January of this year, three executives from Deutsche Bank were also implicated civilly, including Michele Faissola, the wealth management director of the German bank — charged by Italian authorities with colluding with the troubled Monte Paschi in falsifying accounts, manipulating the market and obstructing justice. Faissola denies these charges.
While at least 40 bankers have killed themselves in the 17-month period starting in March 2013 in the wake of the global banking scandal, the circumstances of Rossi’s death stand out as particularly mysterious.
Source: NYPost
