Nino Rovelli

Nino Rovelli was an Italian entrepreneur and bobsledder. The third son of a lower middle-class family, his father Felice was the director of a textile factory in Olgiate Olona and Nino studied at the Liceo Classico of the Rotondi Archbishop’s College in Gorla Minore. He graduated in engineering at the Polytechnic of Milano and was also a bobsledder, proficient enough that he competed in the four-man bobsleigh at the 1948 Olympic Games in St. Moritz, where he finished the race in eleventh place, piloting the sled of Italia 2.

At a very young age Rovelli set up a mechanical workshop in his hometown, which over the years specialized in the production of machine tools for industrial plants. Through this activity he entered into business relations with the chemical industry, to which he supplied pumps and mechanical systems. His early technical skills were visible in the war years, when he patented some operating machines. At the end of the conflict, in the years of the Marshall Plan, he took flight and became a classic example of the post-war self-made man; capable, innovative, but also quick to seize the opportunities of an economic and financial system in the process of rapid transformation, where resources were not lacking.

A great storyteller with an exuberant character, his passion for sport led him not only to bobsleigh races, but also to go-karts and race car driving, and he participated for several years in the Mille Miglia. In 1954 he married Primarosa Battistelli, an actress from Milano with some film appearances, a promising theatrical start, and some experience on television, and together they had 4 children: Angelo, Felice, Oscar and Rita.

Very connected in the 1960s-70s to political leaders in the government (such as Giulio Andreotti and Giacomo Mancini) from whom he secured significant funding (his company SIR was the third Italian chemical group, after Eni and Montedison), between 1976 and 1977 Rovelli saw his economic empire fall apart and then collapse, including shipping, textile and construction companies. In December 1977 he was accused of aggravated fraud against the country and the illegal export of capital. Practically exhausted from his main duties, convinced that he had done everything wrong, and persuaded that he was at the center of a conspiracy hatched against him by freemasonry, in 1980 Rovelli moved with his wife to Switzerland, which allowed him to escape an arrest warrant in 1981.

On 30 December 1990 Rovelli died of cardiac arrest in Zürich while he was undergoing a check-up at the cantonal hospital. Years later it was ascertained that Rovelli had paid several billion lire to three well-known lawyers in Roma to bribe the judges who investigated him.