1. Life and career

2. The Banco Ambrosiano scandal

3. Death

4. Prosecution of Giuseppe Calò and Licio Gelli

5. Trials in Italy

6. Films about Calvi's death

7. See also

8. References

9. Further reading

10. External links

Roberto Calvi (13 April 1920 – 17 June 1982) was an Italian banker dubbed "God's Banker" ({{Lang-it|Banchiere di Dio}}) by the press because of his close association with the Holy See. A native of Milan, Calvi was Chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, which collapsed in one of modern Italy's biggest political scandals.

Calvi's death in London in June 1982 is a source of enduring controversy and was ruled a murder after two coroner's inquests and an independent investigation. In Rome, in June 2007, five people were acquitted of the murder.

Claims have been made that the Vatican Bank, Banco Ambrosiano's main shareholder; the Mafia, which may have used Banco Ambrosiano for money laundering; and the clandestine pseudo-Masonic lodge Propaganda Due were somehow involved in Calvi's death.

Life and career

Roberto Calvi's father worked in the Banca Commerciale Italiana and became the manager of that bank. After Second World War Roberto joined the same bank, but 1947 he changed to Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's second largest private bank. He married in 1952 and had two children. Soon he became personal assistant of Carlo Alessandro Canesi, leading figure and later president of Banco Ambrosiano.^[1] In 1971, Calvi was general manager and in 1975 appointed chairman.

The Banco Ambrosiano scandal

In 1978, the Bank of Italy produced a report on Banco Ambrosiano which found that several billion lire had been exported illegally, leading to criminal investigations. In 1981, Calvi was tried, given a four-year suspended sentence and fined US$19.8 million for transferring US$27 million out of the country in violation of Italian currency laws. He was released on bail pending appeal and kept his position at the bank. During his short spell in jail, he attempted suicide. Calvi's family maintains that he was manipulated by others and was innocent of the crimes attributed to him.^[2]

The controversy surrounding Calvi's dealings at Banco Ambrosiano echoed a previous scandal in 1974, when the Holy See lost an estimated US$30 million upon the collapse of the Franklin National Bank, owned by the Sicilian-born financier Michele Sindona. Bad loans and foreign currency transactions led to the collapse of the bank. Sindona later died in prison after drinking coffee laced with cyanide.^[3]

On 5 June 1982, two weeks before the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano, Calvi wrote a letter of warning to Pope John Paul II, stating that such a forthcoming event would "provoke a catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the Church will suffer the gravest damage."^[3] The correspondence essentially confirmed an understanding that illegal transactions were common knowledge among the top affiliates of the bank and the Vatican.^[4] Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in June 1982 following the discovery of debts of between US$700 million and US$1.5 billion. Much of the money had been siphoned off through the Vatican Bank, which owned 10% of Banco Ambrosiano and was their main shareholder.

In 1984, the Vatican Bank agreed to pay US$224 million to 120 of Banco Ambrosiano's creditors as a "recognition of moral involvement" in the bank's collapse.^[5] Whether the Vatican Bank was directly involved in the scandal cannot be legally confirmed, due to a lack of evidence in the subpoenaed correspondence revealing only that Calvi consistently supported the religious agenda of the Vatican. As it was Calvi who committed the crime of fiscal misconduct and there was no evidence of church involvement otherwise, the Vatican was granted immunity.^[6]

Death

On 10 June 1982, Calvi went missing from his Rome apartment, having fled the country on a false passport in the name of Gian Roberto Calvini, fleeing initially to Venice. From there, he apparently hired a private plane to London via Zurich. At 7:30 am on Friday, 18 June 1982, a postal clerk was crossing Blackfriars Bridge and noticed Calvi's body hanging from the scaffolding beneath. Calvi's clothing was stuffed with bricks, and he was carrying around US$15,000 worth of cash in three different currencies.^[7]

Calvi was a member of Licio Gelli's illegal masonic lodge, Propaganda Due (P2), who referred to themselves as frati neri or "black friars". This led to a suggestion in some quarters that Calvi was murdered as a masonic warning because of the symbolism associated with the word "Blackfriars".^[9]

The day before his body was found, Calvi was stripped of his post at Banco Ambrosiano by the Bank of Italy, and his 55-year-old private secretary, Graziella Corrocher, jumped to her death from a fifth floor window at the bank's headquarters. Corrocher left behind an angry note condemning the damage that Calvi had done to the bank and its employees. Her death was ruled a suicide.

Calvi's death was the subject of two coroner's inquests in the United Kingdom. The first recorded a verdict of suicide in July 1982. The Calvi family then secured the services of George Carman QC. At the second inquest, in July 1983, the jury recorded an open verdict, indicating that the court had been unable to determine the exact cause of death. Calvi's family maintained that his death had been a murder.

In 1991, the Calvi family commissioned the New York-based investigation company Kroll Associates to investigate the circumstances of Calvi's death. The case was assigned to Jeff Katz, who was then a senior case manager for the company in London. As part of his two-year investigation, Katz instructed former Home Office forensic scientists, including Angela Gallop, to undertake forensic tests. As a result, it was found that Calvi could not have hanged himself from the scaffolding because the lack of paint and rust on his shoes proved that he had not walked on the scaffolding. In October 1992, the forensic report was submitted to the Home Secretary and the City of London Police, who dismissed it at the time.

Following the exhumation of Calvi's body in December 1998, an Italian court commissioned a German forensic scientist to repeat the work produced by Katz and his forensic team. That report was published in October 2002, ten years after the original, and confirmed the first report. In addition, it said that the injuries to Calvi's neck were inconsistent with hanging and that he had not touched the bricks found in his pockets. When Calvi's body was found, the level of the River Thames had receded with the tide, giving the scene the appearance of a suicide by hanging, but at the exact time of his death, the place on the scaffolding where the rope had been tied could have been reached by a person standing in a boat. That had also been the conclusion of a separate report by Katz in 1992, which also detailed a reconstruction based on Calvi's last known movements in London and theorized that Calvi had been taken by boat from a point of access to the Thames in West London.^{[8][9][10][11]}

This aspect of Calvi's death was the focus of the theory that he was murdered. It is this version of events depicted on screen in Giuseppe Ferrara's fictional film reconstruction of the event. In September 2003, the City of London Police reopened their investigation as a murder inquiry.^[12][13][14] More evidence arose, revealing Calvi stayed in a flat in Chelsea Cloisters just prior to his death. Three months later, Sergio Vaccari, a small-time drug dealer who had stayed in the very same flat as Calvi, was found dead in possession of masonic papers displaying member names of P2. The murders of both Calvi and Vaccari involved bricks stuffed in clothing, correlating the two deaths and confirming Calvi's ties to the lodge.^[15]

Calvi's life was insured for US$10 million with Unione Italiana. Attempts by his family to obtain a payout resulted in litigation (Fisher v Unione Italiana [1998] CLC 682). Following the forensic report of 2002, which established that Calvi had been murdered, the policy was finally settled, although around half of the sum was paid to creditors of the Calvi family who incurred considerable costs during their attempts to establish Calvi's cause of death.^[16][17][18]

Prosecution of Giuseppe Calò and Licio Gelli

In July 1991, the Mafia pentito Francesco Marino Mannoia claimed that Calvi had been killed because he had lost Mafia funds when Banco Ambrosiano collapsed.^[19][20] According to Mannoia, the killer was Francesco Di Carlo, a mafioso living in London at the time, on the orders of boss Giuseppe Calò and Licio Gelli. When Di Carlo became an informer in June 1996, he denied he was the killer, but admitted he had been approached by Calò to do the job. However, Di Carlo could not be reached in time. When he later called Calò, the latter said that everything had been taken care of.^[21]

According to Di Carlo, the killers were Vaccari and Vincenzo Casillo, who belonged to the Camorra from Naples and were later murdered.^[18] In 1997, Italian prosecutors in Rome implicated Calò in Calvi's murder, along with Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian businessman with wide-ranging interests. Two other men, Di Carlo and Ernesto Diotallevi, a member of the Banda della Magliana, were also alleged to be involved in the killing.

In July 2003, the Italian prosecutors concluded that the Mafia acted not only in its own interests, but also to ensure that Calvi could not blackmail "politico-institutional figures and [representatives] of freemasonry, the P2 lodge, and the Institute of Religious Works with whom he had invested substantial sums of money, some of it from Cosa Nostra and Italian public corporations".^[22]

On 19 July 2005, Gelli, the grand master of the P2 lodge, received a notification informing him that he was formally under investigation on charges of ordering the murder of Calvi along with Calò, Diotallevi, Flavio Carboni and Carboni's Austrian ex-girlfriend, Manuela Kleinszig. The four other suspects were already indicted on murder charges in April. According to the indictment, the five ordered the murder to prevent the banker "from using blackmail power against his political and institutional sponsors from the world of Masonry, belonging to the P2 lodge, or to the Institute for Religious Works (the Vatican Bank) with whom he had managed investments and financing with conspicuous sums of money, some of it coming from Cosa Nostra and public agencies".^[26]

Gelli was accused of provoking Calvi's death to punish him for embezzling money from Banco Ambrosiano that was owed to him and the Mafia. The Mafia allegedly wanted to prevent Calvi from revealing that Banco Ambrosiano was used for money laundering. Gelli denied involvement, but acknowledged that the financier was murdered. In his statement before the court, he said the killing was commissioned in Poland. This is thought to be a reference to Calvi's alleged involvement in financing the Solidarity trade union movement at the request of Pope John Paul II, allegedly on behalf of the Vatican.^[23] However, Gelli's name was not in the final indictment at the trial that started in October 2005.

Trials in Italy

In 2005, the Italian magistrates investigating Calvi's death took their inquiries to London in order to question witnesses. They had been cooperating with Chief Superintendent Trevor Smith, who built his case partly on evidence provided by Katz. Smith had been able to make the first ever arrest of a UK witness who had allegedly committed perjury during the Calvi inquest.^[17]

On 5 October 2005, the trial of the five individuals charged with Calvi's murder began in Rome. The defendants were Calò, Carboni, Kleinszig, Ernesto Diotallevi, and Calvi's former driver and bodyguard Silvano Vittor. The trial took place in a specially fortified courtroom in Rome's Rebibbia prison.^{[3][24][25][26]}

On 6 June 2007, all five individuals were cleared by the court of murdering Calvi.^[27] Mario Lucio d'Andria, the presiding judge at the trial, threw out the charges citing "insufficient evidence" after hearing 20 months of evidence. The verdict was a surprise to some observers. The court ruled that Calvi's death was murder and not suicide.^[28] The defence suggested there were plenty of people with a motive for Calvi's murder, including Vatican officials and Mafia figures who wanted to ensure his silence.^[29][30] Legal experts following the trial said that the prosecutors found it hard to present a convincing case due to the 25 years that elapsed since Calvi's death. Additionally, key witnesses were unwilling to testify, untraceable, or dead.^[31] The prosecution called for Manuela Kleinszig to be cleared, stating that there was insufficient evidence against her, but sought life sentences for the four men.^[38]

Katz claimed it was likely that senior figures in the Italian establishment escaped prosecution. "The problem is that the people who probably actually ordered the death of Calvi are not in the dock - but to get to those people might be very difficult indeed," he said in an interview.^[32] Katz said it was "probably true" that the Mafia carried out the killing, but that the gangsters suspected of the crime were either dead or missing.^[33] The verdict in the trial was not the end of the matter, since by June 2007 the prosecutor's office in Rome had opened a second investigation implicating, among others, Gelli.^[34]

In May 2009, the case against Gelli was dropped. According to the magistrate there was insufficient evidence to argue that Gelli, the former head of P2, had played a role in the planning and execution of the crime.^[35] On 7 May 2010, the Court of Appeals confirmed the acquittal of Calò, Carboni and Diotallevi. The public prosecutor, Luca Tescaroli, commented, after the verdict, that for the family "Calvi has been murdered for the second time."^[36] On 18 November 2011, the court of last resort, the Court of Cassation, confirmed the acquittal.^[37] Calò is still serving a life sentence on unrelated Mafia charges.^[34]

Films about Calvi's death

In December 1982, BBC One's investigative journalism programme Panorama, presented by Jeremy Paxman, broadcast an edition chronicling Calvi's last days and uncovered new evidence which suggested that others had been involved in his death. ^[38]

A 1983 PBS Frontline Documentary, titled "God's Banker" investigated Calvi's links with the Vatican, P2, and if his death was really a suicide.

The circumstances surrounding Calvi's death were made into a feature film, I Banchieri di Dio - Il Caso Calvi (God's Bankers - The Calvi Case), in 2001.^[39] Following the release of the film, Flavio Carboni sued the director Giuseppe Ferrara for slander, but lost the action. The lawsuit caused the film to be withdrawn from Italian cinemas, but it was released on video when the legal action ended.

A heavily fictionalized version of Calvi appears in the film The Godfather Part III in the character of Frederick Keinszig.^[40]

In 1990 The Comic Strip Presents, a Channel Four television series that had transferred to BBC2 that year, produced a spoof version of Calvi's story under the title Spaghetti Hoops, with Nigel Planer in the lead role, and directed by Peter Richardson and co-written by him and Pete Richens.^[41][42] With the same director and co-writers, the comedy film The Pope Must Die (1991), in which a naive priest, played by Robbie Coltrane, is unexpectedly made Pope and takes on a Mafia-dominated Vatican, has been described by Variety as "Loosely based on the Roberto Calvi banking scandal".^[43][44]

In the 2009 film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus, the character of Tony, played by Heath Ledger, is found hanging (alive) under Blackfriars Bridge, described by director Terry Gilliam as "an homage to Roberto Calvi".^[45][46]

Anthony Souter played the role of Roberto Calvi in the film La Verità sta in Cielo by Roberto Faenza, to be released on 6 October 2016 in Italy via 01 distribution (Jean VIgo/Rai).

See also

• Banco Ambrosiano
• The Calvi Affair
• Licio Gelli
• Propaganda Due
• Corporate scandal
• Accounting scandals
• Money laundering

References

Further reading

• Cornwell, Rupert (1983). God's Banker: The Life and Death of Roberto Calvi, London: Victor Gollancz Ltd. {{ISBN|0-04-332099-6}}
• Gurwin, Larry (1983). The Calvi Affair: Death of a Banker. London: Pan Books, 1984, cop. 1983. xiii, 251 p. + [8] p. of b&w photos. {{ISBN|0-330-28540-8}}; alternative ISBN on back cover, 0-330-28338-3
• Yallop, David (1985). In God's Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I, London: Corgi {{ISBN|0-552-12640-3}}
• Raw, Charles (1992). The Money Changers: How the Vatican Bank enabled Roberto Calvi to Steal $250m... London: Harvill. {{ISBN|0-00-217338-7}}
• Willan, Philip (2007). The Last Supper: the Mafia, the Masons and the Killing of Roberto Calvi, London: Constable & Robinson, 2007 {{ISBN|1-84529-296-0}} (Review in The Observer)
• Aldrich, Richard J (2010). GCHQ {(ISBN 10 0-00-731265-2)} Ref p. 407 line 7 Argentinian effort to procure more exocets

External links

• The Pope and the Mafia Millions, Sky Television
• {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20061015113807/http://www.americanatheist.org/pope99/calvi.html |date=October 15, 2006 |title=Through the looking glass: the Vatican and Calvi murder }}
• Propaganda Due (P2) & Roberto Calvi
• Gallery of rare pictures of Roberto Calvi supplied by his son Carlo Calvi
• Who Killed Roberto Calvi? Three Monkeys Interview with journalist Philip Willan

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