Roberto Calvi
Roberto Calvi (
April 13,
1920 -
June 17,
1982) was an
Italian banker dubbed by the press as "God's Banker", due to his close association with the
Vatican. Calvi was the chairman of the
Banco Ambrosiano which collapsed in one of Italy's biggest modern political scandals, and his death in
London in June
1982 has been the source of enduring
controversy. At the time of writing, five people are on trial for his alleged murder. Claims have been made that Calvi's death involved the
Vatican Bank (Banco Ambrosiano's main shareholder), the
Mafia (which may have used Banco Ambrosiano for money laundering), and the
Propaganda Due or
P2 masonic lodge (which was claimed to have links to
Gladio, a far right terrorist organization involved in the so-called
strategia della tensione during the
1970s and
1980s.)
Calvi was born in
Milan.
He was the chairman of Italy's second largest private bank,
Banco Ambrosiano, when it went bankrupt in
1982. In
1978 the
Bank of Italy produced a report on Banco Ambrosiano which found that several billion lire had been exported illegally, and this led to criminal investigations. In
1981 Calvi was put on trial and given a four year suspended sentence and a $19.8 million fine for taking $27 million out of the country in violation of Italian currency laws. He was released on bail pending an appeal and kept his position at the bank. During his short spell in jail he attempted suicide. Calvi's family maintain that he had been manipulated by others and that he was innocent of the crimes attributed to him.
[ See Robert Hutchison's Their Kingdom Come: Inside the Secret World of Opus Dei, 1997. ].
In June
1982, the bank collapsed following the discovery of debts (according to various sources) of between 700 million and 1.5 billion US dollars. Much of the money had been siphoned off via the
Vatican Bank (which is often referred to as the
Istituto per le Opere Religiose or Institute of Religious Works), which was Banco Ambrosiano's main shareholder. 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. He had shaved off his moustache and fled initially to
Venice, and from there he apparently hired a private plane to London. At 7.30 AM on Friday 18 June
1982 a passing postman found his body hanging from scaffolding beneath
Blackfriars Bridge in the financial district of
London. His clothing was stuffed with stones and he was carrying around $15,000 of cash in three different currencies.
Calvi had been a member of
Licio Gelli's secretive masonic lodge,
P2, and Blackfriars Bridge was allegedly a location with significance in freemasonry, since members of P2 referred to themselves as
frati neri or "black friars". On the day before his body was found, Calvi had been stripped of his post at Banco Ambrosiano by the
Bank of Italy, and his 55 year old private secretary Graziella Corrocher had jumped to her death from a fifth floor window at Banco Ambrosiano. Corrocher left behind an angry note condemning the damage that Calvi had done to the bank and its employees. Calvi's death was the subject of two
coroner's inquests in the
United Kingdom. The first inquest recorded a verdict of
suicide in July
1982, while the second inquest recorded an open verdict in July
1983, indicating that the court had been unable to determine the exact cause of his death. Calvi's family maintained that his death had been murder, and following Calvi's exhumation in December
1998 an independent forensic report published in October
2002 concluded that he had been murdered. It was concluded that the injuries to his neck were inconsistent with hanging, and that he had not touched the stones found in his pockets. Additionally, it was concluded that there was a lack of rust and paint on his shoes from the scaffolding over which he would have needed to climb in order to hang himself. In September
2003 the
City of London Police reopened their investigation as a
murder inquiry.
[ "An end to the mystery of God's Banker?", BBC News, March 31, 2004 ] [ "Italian in Scandal Found Dead", UPI, published by the New York Times, June 20, 1982 ] [ "1982: 'God's banker' found hanged", BBC News ]In
1997,
Italian prosecutors in
Rome implicated a member of the Sicilian
Mafia,
Giuseppe Calò, in Calvi's murder, along with Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian businessman with wide ranging interests. Two other men, Ernesto Diotallevi (purportedly the leader of the "Banda della Magliana", a
Roman Mafia-like organization) and former Mafia member turned informer Francesco Di Carlo, were also alleged to be involved in the killing.
On
July 19,
2005,
Licio Gelli, the grand master of the
Propaganda Due or
P2 masonic lodge, was formally indicted by magistrates in Rome for the murder of Calvi, along with
Giuseppe Calò, Ernesto Diotallevi, Flavio Carboni and Carboni's Austrian ex-girlfriend, Manuela Kleinszig. Gelli, in his statement before the court, blamed figures connected with Calvi's work financing the Polish
Solidarity movement, allegedly on behalf of the
Vatican. Gelli was accused of having provoked Calvi's death in order to punish him for embezzling money from Banco Ambrosiano that was owed to him and the Mafia. The Mafia was also claimed to have wanted to prevent Calvi from revealing that Banco Ambrosiano had been used for money laundering.
On
October 5,
2005, the trial of the five individuals charged with Calvi's murder began in Rome. The defendants are
Giuseppe Calò, Flavio Carboni, Manuela Kleinszig, Ernesto Diotallevi, and Calvi's former driver and bodyguard Silvano Vittor. The trial is taking place in a specially fortified courtroom in Rome's Rebibbia prison and is expected to last up to two years. [
1]
Roberto Calvi's life was insured for $10 million with Unione Italiana, and 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 was murdered, the policy was finally paid out, although around half of the sum was paid to creditors of the Calvi family who had incurred considerable costs during their attempts to establish that Calvi had been murdered. [
2] [
3] [
4].
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. Following the release of the film, Flavio Carboni sued the director Giuseppe Ferrara for slander but lost the action. A heavily fictionalized version of Calvi appears in the film
The Godfather Part III in the character of Frederick Keinszig. Calvi was reportedly quoted as saying shortly before his death:"The only book you've got to read is
The Godfather.That's the only one that tells how the world is really run." In
1990 The Comic Strip Presents, a
BBC television series, produced a spoof version of Calvi's story under the title Spaghetti Hoops, with
Nigel Planer in the lead role.[
5] [
6]
*
Banco Ambrosiano*
Licio Gelli*
Propaganda Due*
Strategy of tension*
Piazza Fontana bombing*
Gianmario Roveraro*
Who killed Calvi? , The Observer, December 7, 2003
*
Four charged over Calvi killing, BBC News report of murder charges, April 18, 2005
*
The case of God's Banker: Roberto Calvi the trial begins, The Independent, October 6, 2005
*
'God's banker' found hanged, BBC, June 19, 1982.
*
The Pope and the Mafia Millions, Sky Television
*
Through the looking glass: the Vatican and Calvi murder*
Propaganda Due (P2) & Roberto Calvi*Rupert Cornwell,
God's Banker: The Life and Death of Roberto Calvi, Victor Gollancz Ltd, 1984.
*
David Yallop,
In God's Name: An Investigation into the Murder of Pope John Paul I, Corgi, 1987
