Silvano Larini

Silvano Larini was born in Milan on 17 February 1935 into a well-off family. His father was a businessman in the import and export trade with the Far East and in clothing, and Larini spent part of his childhood in Calcutta, then in British India.

On returning to Milan he studied architecture at the Politecnico di Milano. As a student he made his name with a letter to the weekly Il Mondo attacking Cardinal Giuseppe Siri, then Archbishop of Genoa, who opposed women wearing trousers. He wrote that the charge against women in trousers came, fittingly, from a man in a skirt.

Larini built a business career in the international clothing trade through Equatoriale, a company in which he and his family held shares, and became the largest single shareholder in Borsalino, the historic hat maker of Alessandria, which for four years was run by his third wife. From 1983 to May 1990 he was managing director of Lombardia Risorse, the regional energy company of Lombardy, and he had dealings with the Piano intercomunale milanese (PIM), the Milan area planning body.

His friendship with Bettino Craxi, leader of the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) and prime minister from 1983 to 1987, ran through his public and private life. He regularly attended the Saturday gatherings of friends at Craxi's home in Via Foppa and the Monday meetings with senior party figures, and press accounts credit his Milan network with helping to cement relations between Craxi and Silvio Berlusconi. He was also close to figures such as Pompeo Locatelli and Gabriele Cagliari, president of the state energy group Eni. With his luxury cars and nights in the bars of Brera, he came to embody the Milano da bere, the free-spending Milan of the 1980s.

Larini was among the first people caught up in the Milan investigation known as Mani Pulite (Clean Hands), which began on 17 February 1992, his 57th birthday, with the arrest of Mario Chiesa. A warrant for his arrest was issued in May 1992, and he spent the following months abroad, much of the time in French Polynesia. In December 1992 his name ran through the first notice of investigation served on Craxi.

On 7 February 1993 Larini surrendered to the prosecutor Antonio Di Pietro at the Ventimiglia border crossing. Over four days of questioning he told Di Pietro and Gherardo Colombo that he had taken about 9 billion lire in bribes from contractors on the Milan metro to Craxi's office in Piazza Duomo. He also said that he had been the nominal holder of account 633369 at UBS in Lugano, code-named Protezione, which had been a mystery since 1981, when magistrates searching the offices of Licio Gelli, head of the P2 masonic lodge, found a note linking it to Claudio Martelli and Craxi. According to Larini, in 1980 Craxi, with Martelli beside him, asked him for a Swiss account to receive funds for the party, and he gave them the number. The deposits came from a deal involving Roberto Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano. Martelli, then justice minister, resigned days later after being placed under investigation.

After a few days in prison Larini was released. Apart from the trial of the financier Sergio Cusani over the Enimont bribe, where he famously told Di Pietro that for him dinner time was when he left La Scala, he declined to repeat his statements in court; under the rules then in force his earlier statements were still used, and contributed to convictions of leading politicians, mostly Socialists. In 1994 the Milan court sentenced him to five years and six months over the Conto Protezione. On appeal in 1997 four years were remitted, and the Court of Cassation confirmed the ruling in 1999. A later investigation by prosecutors in La Spezia in 1996 ended without consequences for him.

Larini married for the first time at 25, to Mirina Scacchi Gracco, from a well-known silk family of Como; their only child, a son named Simone, was born of that marriage, and the couple separated after four years. He married a second time, and then a third time, to Viviana Lecchi, a former fashion model and designer.

He was known for a flamboyant, unconventional lifestyle, from a home with a rooftop swimming pool to long sailing trips. After the years of Mani Pulite he returned to painting, a passion since his youth.

Silvano Larini died in Milan in October 2026, aged 91. His death was announced by his wife, Viviana Lecchi, in a death notice in the Corriere della Sera published on 15 October 2026, which read: Silvano Larini, architect, painter, designer, genius loci, naturalist, deep and refined thinker, forever Viviana. The cause of death was not made public. The news was reported by Adnkronos, RaiNews, Sky TG24, la Repubblica and the Corriere della Sera.

Larini is remembered as one of the pivotal witnesses of Tangentopoli. His surrender and his account of the Conto Protezione solved a mystery that had lasted twelve years, linked the P2 lodge papers to the Socialist leadership, brought the resignation of a serving justice minister and dealt what the Corriere della Sera called the knockout blow to Craxi. His life, from a childhood in Calcutta to the salons of 1980s Milan and a late career as a painter, made him one of the most colourful figures of the end of Italy's First Republic.