© IBI World Limited
This year has been a century since the Vatican bankers, led by the Pacelli family (the most famous of them, Eugenio, became Pope Pius XII), who worked in Tripoli and Cairo, laid the foundation for a common idea between an Egyptian and a Vatican bank, as well as between an Egyptian party of religious inspiration, but profoundly worldly, and a political movement that would later become the Italian Christian Democracy (DC). In a hundred years everything has changed, this bank (Banque Misr) now belongs to the Egyptian State, this party (the Muslim Brotherhood) has been persecuted, its members tortured and killed and has shown radical tendencies over time; The Vatican itself has changed its stance on Egypt and the Arab world several times, but to learn this history is necessary to understand the fascinating parallel between Italy and Egypt in the early 20th century and to understand its later consequences to this day.
We therefore begin this narrative at the moment when nationalist Islam and the papacy are at the antipodes and (very carefully) take the first steps towards rapprochement: Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, President of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, dies on July 5, 2018 – the man who, together with three popes (John Paul II, Benedict XVI, Francis I), accompanied a quarter of a century of cooperation between the Vatican and COREIS, the Islamic Religious Community of Italy[1]. A collaboration that began with a historic meeting on religious issues between John Paul II and Ali Abd al-Rahman al-Hashemi, Councilor of the United Arab Emirates (and staff member of the leader Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan[2]) at an annual event (Rimini, Meeting for Friendship among peoples).[3]
The conspiracy against Pope Francis
Steve Bannon in Abu Dhabi
This meeting marked the beginning of a path that, after decades of hostile silence, in 2007 enabled diplomatic relations between the United Arab Emirates and the Vatican to be established and led to the appointment of Cardinal Paul Hinder as Vicar Apostolic of Abu Dhabi[4]. This move further relaxed relations and culminated in the meeting between Pope Francis I and Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan in Rome in 2016[5] and then in Abu Dhabi in February 2019[6]. Nevertheless, Paul Hinder takes an ambivalent position on the Muslim Brotherhood and regarding the bitter war of the pro-Saudi government in Cairo, Riyadh and the Emirates against this political movement: “When the Muslim Brotherhood spread from Egypt to other countries years ago, they were welcomed with open arms (…). But the idyll did not last long and some Arab states have responded with tight and stringent controls or displacement“.[7]
A sentence that the Vice President of COREIS, Yahya Pallavicini[8], does not want to analyze[9]: COREIS does not allow itself to be involved in the internal struggles of Islam, especially those related to the Muslim Brotherhood[10]. According to Pallavicini, this is the only possible way: COREIS represents all Muslims, not just one faction[11]. But there are forces, even within the Christian world, which oppose the rapprochement between Christian and Muslim churches and accuse Pope Francis of heresy, wishing his resignation in the name of chauvinism and ethnic, religious, political racism[12]. These are the same forces that hold on to the violent and undemocratic extreme right-wing political movements, the ones associated with the Saudi and Emirati monarchies in Italy, as in several Middle East countries, in the United States and Asia: Donald Trump, Steve Bannon and the Ku Klux Klan, Matteo Salvini in Italy, Marine Le Pen in France, Alexander Gauland and Christian Lueth in Germany, Norberto Pico in Spain, Nikolaos Michaloliakos in Greece, Jaroslaw Kaczinsky in Poland, Viktor Orban in Hungary.[13]
Those who accuse Pope Bergoglio of terrorism and political heresy and who are in favor of the monarchies in Islamic countries do not know that there is a cooperation between the Vatican and the Islamic Brotherhood that marks a hundred-year history in 2020. A century in which the Egyptians chose the Italian Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI)[14] as a model to start their own economy[15], free from the English yoke. And with the founding of a worldly party, the Muslim Brotherhood, which is closely linked to Islamic religion, which was modeled on Don Luigi Sturzo’s Italian Popular Party[16], which then became Christian Democracy and led democratic Italy for over sixty years. The Muslim Brotherhood, like the Vatican, will sympathize with the movements associated with the outbreak of the Arab Spring – because all over North Africa, from Tunisia to Libya and Egypt, all groups related to the Muslim Brotherhood tried to enable conditions for a similar party to the Italian DC: worldly, but strongly religious[17].
The birth of the Misr Bank
Tal’at Harb and Alberto Beneduce
The Banque Misr[18] is the result of this attempt: it was the first bank of pure Egyptian capital and was rejected by the British colonial power (which at all costs wanted to avoid strong economic concentrations between Egyptians that could question London’s primacy[19]), was supported and protected by the German government[20], however, over a decade before National Socialism took power in Berlin[21] (as the Germans fought against the British Empire for the commercial supremacy in the Mediterranean)[22]. This purely Egyptian bank was the driving force that founded and financially supported the birth of Egyptian transport companies, shipping companies (in partnership with Banco di Roma)[23], the building and food industry, the energy and textile industry, between 1920 and 1936[24]. For the wonderful building that houses the Banque Misr and which was inaugurated in 1927, Tal’at Harb commissioned an Italian architect, Antonio Lasciac[25] from Gorizia, who spent the rest of his life in the Middle East, mostly on charge for the Vatican, building churches and monuments from religious inspiration.[26]
Banque Misr has shown the way and IRI has continued: the institute, which emerged from the ideas of the economist Alberto Beneduce, who has been fighting for the establishment of a bank in the service of the industrial revolution in Parliament since 1911[27]. Long before he founded IRI, Beneduce founded CREDIOP (1919), a bank structured exactly like the Banque Misr: money from enlightened entrepreneurs who, multiplied by financial speculation, subsidized national industrial revitalization[28]. Later, as Beneduce was already working for the Mussolini government, he sent a young COMIT banker (100% IRI) to work with Egypt and Banque Misr to set up the COMIT Banca Commerciale Italiana branch in Cairo (1921)[29]: Paolo Grassi[30], who will then be one of the greatest economists in the history of Italy. But the Vatican had already gone further: in 1912, the Banco di Roma, led by Ernesto Pacelli, showed the Egyptians the way and founded the Cines Seta Artificiale, the first large Italian artificial textile industry, with the capital of the Banco di Roma, which, between 1920 and 1936, began to work with the Misr Group’s industries[31], making Egypt one of the most important markets for the Italian textile industry (and vice versa)[32].
The economic conquest of Libya
Hassan Al-Banna and Luigi Sturzo
Everything has changed, today. Banque Misr has been nationalized for a long time: After a troubled century, today the bank employs around 14,500 people and has the largest portfolio among Egyptian banks: over 10 million customers[33], capital of around 15 billion EGP (USD 950 million)[34], sales (2018) of EGP 670 billion (USD 42 billion)[35], 159 holdings in banks, industries, trading companies, five branches in the United Arab Emirates and one in France, Lebanon and Germany as well as representative offices in China and Russia and a global network of correspondents worldwide.[36]
However, there is one secret that has not yet been revealed: as the relationship between Egyptian nationalism and the CREDIOP led by Beneduce was born, after the colonial adventure in Libya, the Vatican itself embarked on the path that leads to Cairo: the newborn (1890) Banco di Roma[37] (whose majority stake at that time was in the hands of the Vatican and the Jewish community of Rome)[38], in consultation with the government led by Giovanni Giolitti[39], opened a branch in Tripoli. It was an alternative for local entrepreneurs against Turkey, which occupied militarily Tripolitania[40], the Cyrenaica and Fezzan.[41]
With the fascist government of Benito Mussolini and the Italian invasion of Libya, the presence of the Banco di Roma in North Africa has increased. After the inauguration of the Cairo branch, Ernesto Pacelli, banker from the Vatican and nephew of Pope Pius XII[42], gave new directions to customers in Egypt and Libya[43]. The bank does not have in Egypt the same friends as Mussolini: the fascist leader supports Ahmad Hussein, the leader of the Misr Al-Fitat movement – a group of black shirts that fight under the flag of anti-Semitic principles, corporatism and extreme chauvinism, whose positions are widely distant from those of the Banque Misr and the Muslim Brotherhood[44]. In any case, the Catholic Church is not even on the side of the then Egyptian majority party, the WAFD (Ḥizb al-Wafd al-Miṣrī – the delegation party, founded in 1919 to achieve the independence of Egypt during the Treaty negotiations in Locarno[45]), because WAFD is for the secularization of society and for the opposition to all European religious and political forces[46].
The Vatican searches elsewhere and discovers Mohammed Tal’at Pasha Harb and his dream of an independent, worldly, yet religiously inspired Egypt, based on the collaboration between Muslims, Coptic Christians and Sephardic Jews (which will also participate with her money when Banque Misr[47] was born). Harb took the idea of founding this bank from Italian and German bankers. The bank was founded with the financial contribution of six families of Egyptian landowners (who have their origins in the province of Al-Minya[48], like many of the investors at Banco di Roma in Egypt[49]), based on the guidelines set out by Harb in his 1911 book: “Egypt’s Economic Solution and the Project for an Egyptian or National Bank“, which shows the way to liberation from the British colonial yoke.[50]
The end of the Italian colonial dream
Gamal Abd-el Nasser
This book by Tal’at Harb inspired many Egyptians, especially Hassan Al-Banna, who founded the Muslim Brotherhood in 1928[51]: the movement that accompanied the early years of the Banque Misr and supported it economically, politically, and with propaganda among Egyptian entrepreneurs[52]. This period ended when Gamal Abdel-Nasser came to power after the coup in 1952, with the consequence of the expulsion of the British military and the ban on the Brotherhood, whose leaders fled or were imprisoned in Egypt[53]. Until then, Banque Misr continued to be run by the heirs of Tal’at Harb, the friends of Hassan Al-Banna[54], the country’s main landowners, and those lay intellectuals who dreamed of an Egypt similar to Ataturk’s Turkey.[55]
Like Al-Sisi and his friends in Riyadh and Dubai today, Nasser had an official religious reason to oppose the Banque Misr: he accused the bank of being an institution that operates according to the rules of international finance and not according to Sharia law[56] – the same reason that General Al-Sisi will claim over 90 years after its founding that the Muslim Brotherhood (and the old Banque Misr leadership) is guilty of heresy.[57]
Banque Misr is also the first bank in the Arab world to be accepted among the members of the Bank for International Settlements in Basel [58](BIS) at the end of the Second World War. Saudi Arabia (1952) and its Arab Bank also joined, but only after the monarchy founded the SAMA Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency, which forces the Saudi credit system to adhere to the rules of international trade. Previously, the clearing of Egyptian banks was controlled and guaranteed by the Bank of England[59], and the official currency was the pound[60]. The Banco di Roma, which supported the application for membership of Banque Misr as early as 1936 and showed that Egypt was one of the few countries that could mint money with full gold reserves[61], had been a member of the BIS since 1930[62].
After the military defeat of World War II (1946), the Italians only managed to reopen the branch of the Banco di Roma in Tripoli[63], and the main headquarters of the Banco di Roma itself was led by the decision of the first post-monarchist government, due to the financial difficulties of the Vatican, by Christian Democrats, and transferred to IRI[64], while maintaining a very close relationship with the Vatican[65] and the Pacelli family (the family of Pope Pius XII)[66]. The Deutsche Orientbank, which belonged to Dresdner Bank[67], was headquartered in Istanbul, but due to the collapse of the global economy in 1929, it plunged into a liquidity crisis, came under the (official)[68] control of Turkish shareholders, which had to file for bankruptcy in 1946.[69]
Ahmed Al-Najjar and the Mit-Ghamr Bank
The HQ of Mit-Ghamr Bank in 1965
Cooperation between Banque Misr and Banco di Roma was restarted in 1975 as the bank founded Misr International Bank (shortly after the Egyptian opening to foreign capital), in which Banque Misr holds 44% and Banco di Roma[70] has subscribed 7.375% of the shares, which is increased to 10% of the capital[71] in the following years. Despite the nationalization by President Nasser, the connection between Banque Misr and the Muslim Brotherhood remains very strong[72], especially thanks to Ahmed Al-Najjar and his Mit-Ghamr Bank[73]: Al-Najjar, who studied in Germany, believes in the Sharia rules (like the leaders of the Muslim Brotherhood) and after returning to his country combines his studies and work with the influence of the socio-economic thinking of the Muslim Brotherhood, which was born with the Banque Misr and was rejected and annulled by the Nasser regime[74].
Al-Najjar not only writes articles, he becomes a banker himself. Mit-Ghamr Bank was founded in 1963 and applies Sharia law[75]: it does not pay dividends or interest, but grants interest-free loans, the profit of which is only a future profit sharing[76]. The reason why Al-Najjar founded the bank in this town in Ad Daqahliyah province is because there was already a large and thriving aluminum production center there at the end of the First World War, consisting of about 20 small factories, producing more than 70 % of national demand[77]. However, in order to survive economically and ensure production, these factories employ up to 50,000 people (at least a third of whom are children who are paid even less) with starvation wages and suffering from severe lung diseases (such as fibrosis): a fact that leaves the Egyptian authorities completely indifferent for a century[78]. Although the production system is obviously out of date and almost all of these factories are now facing the insolvency, the government decided in 2014 to refinance them because they are good for employment and social cohesion and therefore cannot be closed. It doesn’t matter at what price – in cash and for health.[79]
Al-Najjad’s attempt works[80]: the first bank in the world to use Sharia law makes good money, guarantees wages for employees from a dozen branches, pays Zaqat and grants over a quarter of its assets to what we now call microcredit[81] at that time a revolutionary concept that Al-Najjar had learned from the German savings banks (what is called Casse Rurali in Italy)[82]. But Nasser did not take up this challenge and nationalized Mit-Ghamr in 1967, renamed it Nasser Savings Bank and closed it, forcing Al-Najjar to emigrate to Turkey[83]. The branches of the surrounding villages are distributed among the four nationalized banks of Egypt (including Banque Misr), but in the following years they will close their doors because even Al-Najjar, in 1967, with the growth in the number of customers, saw that as a result, from the loans disbursed, the bank had to accept that the economic downturn in trade or industrial production was too small, which had a serious impact on the bank: on the one hand, no profits were posted, on the other hand, many customers were no longer able to repay the debt on a regular basis , even though these were without interest charges[84].
The interreligious debate on bank interests
Sayyid Qutb shortly before his hanging
The experiment was enthusiastically supported by the Muslim Brotherhood (which, according to economic history scholars, is the main reason why Nasser wanted to destroy this attempt)[85]. But looking at Mit-Ghamr Bank with admiration was above all the Vatican, which since the time of the French Revolution (and even earlier with Thomas Aquinas) had condemned the birth and growth of the banking system and the loans that the Church had viewed as a threat to the stability of feudalism and the absolute monarchies, characteristics that are inextricably linked to the power of the Catholic Church.[86]
It was only in 1917, and with great suffering, under the pressure of the Calvinists’ secessionist pressure[87], that the Vatican admitted the legitimacy of charging interest rates[88], but in principle always fought against this method of winning and confirmed its consent to that of the Muslim Brotherhood and the Sharia-supported rules. After the election of Pope Francis, the Vatican reopened the internal debate on the lawfulness of interest rates and openly showed sympathy for the Sharia, prompting the International Monetary Fund (IMF) managing director Christine Lagarde to improve the position of the Vatican comments and accept their validity. The position of the papacy is so clear[89] that the Vatican[90] publisher Marcianum Press prints the Italian version of the main Sharia[91] economic theory books and Giovanni Maria Vian, director of the official Vatican newspaper “L’Osservatore Romano“, has repeated and adhered to the principles of Sayyid Qutb[92], one of the ideological fathers of the Muslim Brotherhood and a major supporter of Tal’at Harb and Ahmed Al-Najjar’s[93] economic theses; an ideologist, Qutb, who was persecuted and hanged by President Nasser[94] in 1966 on orders from the government.
Gamal Abdel Nasser will also be a bitter opponent of the papacy. His hatred of Tal’at Harb and the Al Banna movement probably started in the cradle as he came from a poor Al Minya family and his mother’s family suffered under the economic yoke of local families (who founded Banque Misr)[95]. From his youth, his pro-socialist and militaristic position had led him to hate Israel (as the oppressor of the Palestinians and illegitimate occupants of areas that Nasser considered Egyptian) and the Vatican, which at the time was associated with the papacy of John XXIII, who tried to let the ambiguous positions of Pius XII about National Socialism be forgotten and even tried to establish solid connections with the extreme formations of Jewish Zionism[96]. Abdul Rahman Azzam, Secretary General of the Arab League, accused the Pope (1945) of never taking a clear position against the Jewish idea of creating a “Jewish symbolic State” in Israel, which should be modeled on the Vatican City.[97]
But after the fall of Nasser, during the papacy of Paul VI and John Paul I, the Vatican showed equidistance from the two most extreme currents of contemporary Islam: The Wahhabis from Saudi Arabia, which led to the birth of Al Qaeda, both also those of the Muslim Brotherhood, which, after the suppression and execution of Sayyid Qutb, proclaimed the correctness of jihad to avoid oppression of the Muslim religion[98].
The rapprochement
Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran and Ayatollah Ahmad Iravani
In the years before the Arab Spring there had been an approach to the organization led by Tariq Ramadan: in 2007 there was a very positive exchange of official messages[99], which also resulted from a gaffe from Benedict XVI, to which the Pope presented his excuses[100]. As Mohammed Morsi won the Egyptian elections in 2012 and the Muslim Brotherhood[101] party became the country’s democratic majority, Cardinal Michael Fitzgerald, the Vatican ambassador to Cairo, paid an official visit to Sohag, the Brotherhood’s base, in 2012.
Unfortunately, the unrest began immediately afterwards, and we cannot say whether the 37 burned Christian churches, as well as the Coptic massacres, have been done by the angry and uncontrolled masses, by the fascist troops of Abdel Fattah Al-Sisi and his sponsors from Abu Dhabi and Riyadh or were committed from the Brotherhood. The fact is, mainly because of the bloody events in Egypt, until the appointment of Francis I, the frost[102] between the two sides fell so much that the election of the new Pope sparked enthusiasm and hope in the Brotherhood[103]. An enthusiasm that the Jesuits do not share, who today show more sympathy for Saudi Arabia and Egypt than the Arab Spring and the Brotherhood, and which immediately criticized the calming tendency of Francis I[104]: so persistent that the new Pope, who’s a Jesuit, replaced the Jesuit Father Federico Lombardi. Someone who has dominated the political line of all Vatican media for decades, both the press and radio, television and the press room[105]. Then the phase of relaxation began, which is still in its infancy but continues.[106]
The fact is that a circle has ended after a hundred years. The banking system, inspired by religious criteria, has returned to the starting point that the Pacelli family, the Banco di Roma, the first edition of Banque Misr, Tal’at Harb, and in which the Pope and Brotherhood agreed: the financial system without Sharia-Rules has failed considerably – in the sense that it does not defend sociality and humanity, but suppresses the weak and enriches those who were already rich and powerful. As for the political aspect, more than twenty years after the decline of Christian Democracy, the weight of religious morality in politics cannot remain in the hands of right-wing populists, opportunists and sovereignists who kiss the rosaries but commit most incredible atrocities.
Perhaps Christians would need a new Luigi Sturzo in politics, and the Muslim Brotherhood should be helped and accompanied in its development, which will bring them back to the origins of Hassan Al-Banna and the understanding that jihad does not liberate but only kills – because if the massacres of Muslim fundamentalists, above all, massacre the believers of Islam, the mass killings of Christian fundamentalists, especially in the United States, are crimes of invisible arbitrariness, often out of pure ethnic hatred or personal frustration. John Paul II had said it: The 21st century will be a great return to religiousness. As a staunch layperson, I hope that it meant a return to the positive values of religious teaching and not to the murderous folly of many who, regardless of name, have used God to commit inhumane massacres for purely personal purposes over the past 2000 years.
[1] https://www.coreis.it/dialogo-interreligioso/notizia/ultimo-saluto-al-cardinale-jean-louis-tauran-protagonista-del-dialogo-tra-la-santa-sede-e-lislam-italiano-e-mondiale
[2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XC8WLiebOB8
[3] https://www.coreis.it/dialogo-interreligioso/notizia/ultimo-saluto-al-cardinale-jean-louis-tauran-protagonista-del-dialogo-tra-la-santa-sede-e-lislam-italiano-e-mondiale ; https://web.archive.org/web/20100613025043/http://meetingrimini.org/default.asp?id=673&edizione=3923
[4] http://www.asianews.it/notizie-it/Relazioni-diplomatiche-tra-Santa-Sede-ed-Emirati-arabi-9423.html ; https://www.toscanaoggi.it/Toscana/SANTA-SEDE-ALLACCIATE-RELAZIONI-DIPLOMATICHE-CON-GLI-EMIRATI-ARABI-UNITI
[5] https://www.mei.edu/publications/pope-uae-and-muslim-brotherhood
[6] https://www.vaticannews.va/it/papa/news/2019-01/papa-francesco-abu-dhabi-videomessaggio.html
[7] http://www.30giorni.it/articoli_id_15285_l3.htm
[8] https://www.nuovaresistenza.org/2015/06/lislam-di-oggi-visto-da-un-imam-lindro/
[9] https://www.nuovaresistenza.org/2015/06/lislam-di-oggi-visto-da-un-imam-lindro/
[10] Barry M. Rubin, “Guide to Islamic Movements, volume 2”, M.E. Sharpe Publishers, New York 2010, pages 475-476, see https://books.google.it/books?id=wEih57-GWQQC&pg=PA475&lpg=PA475&dq=coreis+%22muslim+brotherhood%22&source=bl&ots=14_Nc8UDUc&sig=ACfU3U2Wfm4p9Gbdv9Wz0uF-gTc2gkcM3Q&hl=it&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjUj-LBgMvqAhUVxMQBHc-sBzkQ6AEwAHoECAYQAQ#v=onepage&q=coreis%20%22muslim%20brotherhood%22&f=false
[11] https://www.coreis.it/chi-siamo
[12] https://www.raiplay.it/video/2020/04/Report—Dio-Patria-Famiglia-Spa-850ab2dc-3f12-4aba-8d37-fd3547f30c69.html, starting after 12 minutes
[13] https://www.raiplay.it/video/2020/04/Report—Dio-Patria-Famiglia-Spa-850ab2dc-3f12-4aba-8d37-fd3547f30c69.html, starting after 12 minutes
[14] https://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRI
[15] http://www.mercatiaconfronto.it/Portals/0/Egitto%20IAI/EGITTO-Mondimpresa.pdf, page 18
[16] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CY5DGDg7jNk : Matthew Bagot, “The Right to Religious Freedom and its political Significance: Catholic and Islamic Approaches”, University of Dayton (Ohio), 2019 – see also https://ecommons.udayton.edu/human_rights/2019/events/26/?utm_source=ecommons.udayton.edu%2Fhuman_rights%2F2019%2Fevents%2F26&utm_medium=PDF&utm_campaign=PDFCoverPages
[17] http://www.radioradicale.it/scheda/489704/islam-e-democrazia-leccezione-tunisina
[18] https://www.banquemisr.com/en
[19] A. Khadir Yildrim, “Muslim Democratic Parties in the Middle East: Economy and Politics of Islamist Moderation”, Indiana University Press, Bloomington 2016, pages 129-130
[20] Monica Friedrich Zetek, “Die Entwicklung der national-ägyptischen Miṣr-Gruppe im Zeitraum zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihres Verhältnisses zum deutschen Kapital: eine wirtschaftshistorische Untersuchung der ökonomischen Aktivitäten der I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G. in Ägypten, insbesondere gegenüber den industriellen Tochtergesellschaften der Bank Miṣr“, Dissertation, Leipziger Universität, Leipzig 1989, passim
[21] Eric Davis, “Challenging Colonialism: Bank Misr and Egyptian Industrialization 1920-1941”, Princeton University Press, Princeton 1983, pages 68-75
[22] Monica Friedrich Zetek, “Die Entwicklung der national-ägyptischen Miṣr-Gruppe im Zeitraum zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihres Verhältnisses zum deutschen Kapital: eine wirtschaftshistorische Untersuchung der ökonomischen Aktivitäten der I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G. in Ägypten, insbesondere gegenüber den industriellen Tochtergesellschaften der Bank Miṣr“, Dissertation, Leipziger Universität, Leipzig 1989, Chapter 2-3
[23] http://www.aidmen.it/articles.html/_/articles/le-linee-di-navigazione-del-banco-di-roma-che-operarono-dal-1908-al-r50
[24] https://web.archive.org/web/20080302113831/http://www.wataninet.com/article_en.asp?ArticleID=17047 ; Monica Friedrich Zetek, “Die Entwicklung der national-ägyptischen Miṣr-Gruppe im Zeitraum zwischen den beiden Weltkriegen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihres Verhältnisses zum deutschen Kapital: eine wirtschaftshistorische Untersuchung der ökonomischen Aktivitäten der I.G. Farbenindustrie A.G. in Ägypten, insbesondere gegenüber den industriellen Tochtergesellschaften der Bank Miṣr“, Dissertation, Leipziger Universität, Leipzig 1989, passim
[25] https://www.banquemisr.com/en/aboutus/Documents/Banque%20Profile/Corporate%20profile.pdf
[26] http://www.fvgnews.net/view.php?t=n&k=573
[27] Valerio Castronovo, “Storia dell’IRI dalle origini al dopoguerra: 1933-1948”, Laterza, Bari 2012, Chapter 1
[28] Pier Francesco Asso, Marcello De Cecco, “Storia del CREDIOP. Tra credito speciale e finanza pubblica: 1920-1960”, Laterza, bari, passim
[29] http://www.noicomit.it/dettaglio.php?id=76
[30] http://www.bankpedia.org/index.php/it/103-italian/g/20399-grassi-paolo-enciclopedia, § 6
[31] https://web.archive.org/web/20080302113831/http://www.wataninet.com/article_en.asp?ArticleID=17047
[32] Misr produceva cotone e seta, Cines produceva fibre artificiali, ed insieme vendevano in tutto il mondo – Marcella Spadoni, “Le fibre tessili artificiali in Italia dai primi del Novecento alla Seconda Guerra Mondiale”, Dissertazione, Pisa 2000, page 146 and page 42, http://www.storiaindustria.it/universita_ricerca/dwd/Tesicompleta_Spadoni.pdf
[33] https://aibe.it/banche-associate/banque-misr/
[34] https://www.unepfi.org/member/banque-misr/
[35] Banque Misr, “Annual Sustainability Report 2017-2018”, Cairo 2019, pages 42-43 – see https://www.banquemisr.com/en/aboutus/Documents/Annual%20Reports/Financial%20Statements%202017-2018.pdf
[36] Banque Misr, “Annual Sustainability Report 2017-2018”, Cairo 2019, pages 52-53 – see https://www.banquemisr.com/en/aboutus/Documents/Annual%20Reports/Financial%20Statements%202017-2018.pdf
[37] “In 1890, on direct inspiration of Leo XIII, men closely related to the Vatican founded the Banco di Roma, in order to finance the various confessional bodies. This bank was later favored in the management of public services for the city of Rome“, in Luigi Cipriani, “La finanza vaticana in Italia: dagli espropri del 1866 ai Patti Lateranensi”, Roma 1984, as in https://www.fondazionecipriani.it/Scritti/vaticano.html
[38] http://www.aidmen.it/articles.html/_/articles/le-linee-di-navigazione-del-banco-di-roma-che-operarono-dal-1908-al-r50
[39] Ilaria Pavan & Guri Schwarz, “Gli Ebrei in Italia tra persecuzione fascista e reintegrazione postbellica”, Casa Editrice Giuntina, Firenze 2001, pages 61-62 – see https://books.google.it/books?id=7WvJfHa_4lEC&pg=PA62&lpg=PA62&dq=%22banco+di+roma%22+egitto&source=bl&ots=HJsD2nPVOd&sig=ACfU3U3MFa-rJ1rzBQ8ZXqBc-xZogICwRw&hl=it&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjz64DD9LvqAhVgQEEAHSpoAqwQ6AEwA3oECAkQAQ#v=onepage&q=%22banco%20di%20roma%22%20egitto&f=false ; https://www.lintellettualedissidente.it/controcultura/storia/fatalmente-legati-litalia-liberale-in-libia/
[40] https://st.ilsole24ore.com/art/notizie/2011-08-25/1911-guerra-banco-roma-063918.shtml?uuid=AakDioyD
[41] Renato Mori, “La penetrazione pacifica italiana in Libia dal 1907 al 1911 ed il Banco di Roma”, Rivista di Studi Politici Internazionali, Volume 24, Roma 1958, pages 102-118 – see https://www.jstor.org/stable/42733953?read-now=1&seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents
[42] Saskia Van Genugten, “Libya in Western Foreign Policies 1911-2011“, Springer Verlag, Berlin 2016, pages 15-19; Sarvepalli Gopal, “History of Humanity”, Volume VII, UNESCO, Paris 2008, page 688
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[67] “Merkblatt über den deutsch-türkischen Handelsverkehr und über das Garantiewesen: Deutsche Orientbank, Filiale d. Dresdner Bank”, Dresdner Bank, Berlin 1935, pages 3-9; “Ägyptische Wirtschaftsberichte“, Dresdner Bank, Berlin -1926-1939
[68] As early as 1940, the three major industrial and financial forces of the Third Reich (IG Farben, Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Bank) had begun to conceal their international assets to avoid an embargo or the seizure of their assets, so these companies, located abroad, they were often entrusted to local trustees who, vis-à-vis the national banking authorities abroad, seemed extraneous to German interests – cfr. Hans-Magnus Enzerberger, “OMGUS: Ermittlungen gegen die Dresdner Bank”, Franz Greno, Nördlingen 1986
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[75] https://islamicmarkets.com/education/an-early-experiment-islamic-banking
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[81] Zeyneb Hafsa Orhan, “Mit Ghamr Savings Bank: A Role Model or an Irreplicable Utopia?”, in “Insan & Toplum – The Journal of Humanity and Society”, Scientific Studies Association, Istanbul 2018, pages 85-102, see also https://insanvetoplum.org/content/6-sayilar/16-8-2/5-m0263/orhan.pdf
[82] Andrew W. Mullineux and Victor Murinde, “Handbook of International Banking”, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham 2003, pages 192-193
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[84] Zeyneb Hafsa Orhan, “Mit Ghamr Savings Bank: A Role Model or an Irreplicable Utopia?”, in “Insan & Toplum – The Journal of Humanity and Society”, Scientific Studies Association, Istanbul 2018, pages 85-102, see also https://insanvetoplum.org/content/6-sayilar/16-8-2/5-m0263/orhan.pdf
[85] Zeyneb Hafsa Orhan, “Mit Ghamr Savings Bank: A Role Model or an Irreplicable Utopia?”, in “Insan & Toplum – The Journal of Humanity and Society”, Scientific Studies Association, Istanbul 2018, pages 85-102, see also https://insanvetoplum.org/content/6-sayilar/16-8-2/5-m0263/orhan.pdf
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