FOUR people have been charged with the murder in London of Roberto Calvi, a financier known as “God’s banker” because of his close ties to the Vatican.

The decision by an Italian court to charge the four suspects yesterday comes 23 years after Calvi’s death. He was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in June 1982, his suit pockets stuffed with rocks and banknotes, soon after the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, of which he was chairman.

It was Italy’s biggest postwar banking scandal, and one that implicated the Vatican, which had provided letters of credit for loans. Among the four people indicted yesterday was Pippo Calo, a man convicted of Mafia links whom prosecutors allege ordered Calvi’s killing. Also ordered to stand trial in October were the business- man Flavio Carboni and his Austrian former girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig, who travelled to London with Calvi shortly before his death, and another businessman, Ernesto Diotallevi.

Defence lawyers maintain that Calvi committed suicide. However, in July 2003, Italian prosecutors concluded that he had been killed, as his family has long contended.

British police announced in 2003 that they had begun a murder inquiry after a detailed review of the case. Prosecutors say that Calvi was laundering money for the Mafia, and that Signor Calo ordered his murder because Mafia bosses were afraid that he would talk.

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