Following a last minute aborted coup d'état plot which fizzled out in the night of 8 December 1970 (the Feast of the Immaculate Conception), referred to as the Golpe Borghese, he was forced to cross the border to avoid arrest and interrogation. In 1984, ten years after Borghese's death, the Supreme Court of Cassation ruled that no coup d'état attempt had happened.