The mystery of Roberto Calvi’s death survived another long inquiry yesterday, when five people accused of conspiring to murder the man known as “God’s Banker” in London 25 years ago were acquitted.

Calvi was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge on June 18, 1982, his pockets stuffed with bricks and bank-notes. Theories about who wanted Calvi dead involve Vatican-linked Mafia figures, freemasons, Italian politicians and various secret services.

The prosecution during the 20-month trial in Rome maintained that Calvi was lured to London, murdered and then hanged to make it appear that he had killed himself.

The judgment came as a blow to his family, who have campaigned relentlessly for inquests and inquiries. City of London Police, who had helped Italian prosecutors to make their case, expressed their frustration. “It is disappointing for Roberto Calvi’s family that those responsible for his murder have still not faced justice,” a spokeswoman said.

The five, who were accused of luring Calvi, 62, to his death, are Giuseppe “Pippo” Calo, known as the Mafia’s “cashier”, who is already in prison on unrelated charges; Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian businessman; Manuela Kleinszig, Carboni’s Austrian former girlfriend; Ernesto Diotallevi, another businessmen; and Silvano Vittor, Calvi’s bodyguard.

Prosecutors had asked for life sentences, except in the case of Kleinszig. However, Judge Mario Lucio d’Andria, the presiding judge in the trial at Rebibbia high-security prison in Rome, dismissed the charges because of “insufficient evidence”.

Defence lawyers had cited the initial assessment by British forensic science experts that the banker killed himself, claiming that it is still valid. But the prosecution said that tests on Calvi’s shoes and clothing found no signs that he had climbed the scaffolding from which he was hanging and said that marks on his body were consistent with his having been strangled.

A first inquest in London ruled that his death was suicide. But a second recorded an open verdict, and Calvi’s family succeeded in having the case reopened as a murder inquiry, with the help of Jeff Katz, a corporate investigator.

Mr Katz said that he had expected several of the defendants to be convicted and suggested that powerful political forces in Italy were among those behind the murder. Mr Katz said it was “probably true” that the Mafia had carried out the killing but that the gangsters suspected of the crime were either dead or missing.

In 2003 Italian prosecutors concluded that the banker had indeed been killed, and that Calvi had laundered money for the Mafia. His Banco Ambrosiano, a Catholic bank in Milan linked to the Vatican Bank, collapsed shortly before his death in one of the biggest fraud scandals in Italy. Prosecutors believe that Mafia bosses wanted Calvi dead either because he had failed to repay them or because he was about to expose them. Banco Ambrosiano collapsed after the disappearance of nearly $1.5 billion (£750 million) in loans to shell companies in Latin America, allegedly to help to fund anticommunist movements. The Vatican Bank, the IOR, had provided letters of credit for the loans. It paid $250 million to Ambrosiano’s creditors after Calvi’s death but denied any wrongdoing.

Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, former head of the Vatican Bank, who could have shed light on the mystery, died in retirement in the US while the trial was under way. He had refused to give evidence.

Calvi’s relatives – above all, his son, Carlo, a banker in Canada, and his widow, Carla – maintain that he was murdered by Mafia gangsters to cover up the extent to which the Vatican Bank, which funded anticommunist groups in Eastern Europe and Latin America, was entangled with organised crime. They also claim that an illegal masonic lodge, P2, to which Calvi belonged, was involved in the conspiracy.

Scientific evidence presented at the trial suggests that Calvi was still alive – but probably unconscious – when a noose was placed around his neck under the bridge and that he took up to an hour to die.

On June 5, 1982, two weeks before his death, Calvi wote to Pope John Paul II, giving warning that the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano would “provoke a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the Church will suffer the gravest damage”.

He said that he had been betrayed and abandoned by “the authority for which I have always shown the utmost respect and obedience” – meaning the Vatican – and said that he was the victim of enemies within the Church who were also conspiring against the Pope himself.

In the letter he also said that he believed the Pope was being kept in the dark about the Vatican’s financial irregularities.

Vatican’s man

1946 Roberto Calvi joins Banco Ambrosiano
1971 Rises to chairman, creates network of offshore shell companies. Has close links to Vatican Bank
1981 Convicted of currency-trading violations
1982 Flees to London. Body discovered under Blackfriars Bridge. First inquest says suicide, later changed to open verdict 1992 Rome magistrates reopen inquiry
1998 Body exhumed. Rome prosecutors advise Pippo Calo, Flavio Carboni, and Ernesto Diotallevi that they are under investigation
2005 Calo, Carboni, Diotallevi and Vittor charged with Manuela Kleinzig
2007 All acquitted

Source: Times archive

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