Frederick Keinszig (1934-1980) was the Swiss chief accountant of the Vatican Bank during the 1970s. He thus represented the Vatican on the board of International Immobiliare, and he was a member of the trio (along with Licio Lucchesi and Liam Gilday) that tried to swindle Michael Corleone into paying off the Bank's massive deficits. In 1980, Keinszig was found hanging from a bridge in an apparent suicide.
Biography[]
Frederick Keinszig was born in Switzerland in 1934, and he worked as a banker before becoming the chief accountant of the Vatican Bank during the 1970s. He represented the Vatican on the board of International Immobiliare, a European real estate company in which the Catholic Church had a quarter interest, and he was also a member of the secretive Propaganda Due group. In 1979, he conspired with mafioso Licio Lucchesi and Archbishop Liam Gilday to swindle Michael Corleone into giving hundreds of thousands of dollars to senior political figures in Italy. Corleone bought the Vatican's shares in Immobiliare, and he also became the company's de facto largest shareholder, but he lacked the Papal approval to acquire the Vatican's shares, and his $600 million investment was therefore without any gains in return.
Disappearance and death[]
Keinszig's hanging body
After the death of Pope Paul VI, the new pope, Pope John Paul I, requested a meeting with Keinszig to discuss reforms of the Vatican Bank. However, Keinszig mysteriously departed Rome with a large amount of money and important documents, and Michael Corleone's nephew, Corleone crime family boss Vincent Mancini, ordered the deaths of the conspirators as revenge for his uncle's swindling. Keinszig was tracked down to his house in London, and he was smothered with a pillow as he lay on a bed. His corpse was subsequently hung from the Blackfriars Bridge in full view of the public, making his death appear to be a suicide.