Of course the worst thing about the Terzo Corpo came later.......... no-one was ever sure the Russians fell for it given the penetration of the CPI in Italian life but you never know.
It was closed down in 1972 - unfortunately they forgot about two issues - Paperwork 1 & paperwork 2
The diligent few had, as required , generated a mountain of paperwork as only Italians can when they put their mind to it. This was all carefully stored - by the late 80's the cost was becoming noticeable and it was proposed to shred it all. However of course it was all classified information. To shred it you had to declassify it - and who could sign off the declassification? Only the people who classified it in the first place - but these were either dead or never existed................... (I once came across this sort of thing with a Company Bank Account in Rome.... months of fun)..............................
Paperwork 2 was Pensions & Benefits... those "real " people who served were of course given all the relevant pensions etc etc - the problem was the couple of hundred thousand "unreal" people who were on the books... as part of the
maskirova they had all got pensions, even been awarded medals, featured in the newspapers etc etc - and worse they were all on the books of several other Ministries who had processed them thinking they actually DID exist. It is/was impossible to remove their benefits without a major legislation, which would also set an unfortunate precedent.
We were assured that none of these "pensions" had actually ever been paid but being Italy the natives feel it was unlikely that such a vast sum would be allowed to go to waste on the books as it were... who knows........
