That, at least, was the original outcome of the forensic investigation carried out at remarkable speed by the British authorities. However, from the very beginning there were those who doubted the accuracy of the findings, and today - 6 October - legal proceedings commenced in Italy which should establish how and by whom the main figure in one of the largest financial scandals in the past 50 years was murdered. Those standing trial for their alleged involvement in his death are a senior member of the Sicilian Mafia and four accomplices.
| The trial at a high security prison in Rome opened on 6 October but was almost immediately adjourned on technical grounds |
In the 1970s, Roberto Calvi was an ambitious banker who had excellent connections within the Vatican and a group known as P2, a secretive lodge of freemasons which formed a state within the state of Italy. It later emerged that, during this period, Mr Calvi's bank spent hundreds of millions of dollars speculating in South America, on financing weapons deals for Argentina and Chile (then ruled by the Pinochet regime), on secret contributions to Poland's free trade union Solidarity, to Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza and to Italy's Christian Democrats.
The capital used for these ends was raised using written guarantees from the Vatican's own bank, the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), which later bought off its liabilities with a payment of 251 million dollars. The head of the IOR, Monsignor Marcinkus, was subsequently discredited as a result of the scandal and was demoted to the humble position of priest in Chicago.
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Monsignor Marcinkus |
The Banco Ambrosiano finally went bankrupt in 1982, leaving debts of 1200 million dollars. One year before, Roberto Calvi was convicted on currency violation charges, but released on bail waiting appeal. On 10 June 1982, when it became clear that the Banco Ambrosiano could not be saved, he disappeared, apparently in an attempt to evade his creditors. Eight days later he was found dead in London.
The suicide theory was finally dismissed completely a few years ago, when a Mafia informant told the authorities that Robert Calvi had indeed been murdered - by the Cosa Nostra, which had also ploughed millions of its illegal earnings into the bank. Meanwhile, new investigations revealed that it was almost impossible that Robert Calvi could have hanged himself under Blackfriar's bridge. The significance of the bricks found in his pockets is also said to have become clear - a warning to the freemasons.
The men behind the killing
The two people now thought to have actually killed him, and the man who rented the boat on which - according to the informant - Roberto Calvi was actually murdered, were themselves murdered in 1983, possibly by the Mafia. The alleged murderer was killed by a bomb planted in his car. However, the persons believed to have ordered the killing are still alive. Those standing trial include former Mafia 'treasurer' Pippo Calo - who is already serving a long jail sentence - businessman Francesco Pazienza, who brokered many a dubious deal for the Banco Ambrosiano, and three others.
Now, some 23 years after the murder and with loss of several useful witnesses, the court in Italy faces the difficult task of trying to shed further light on the mysterious death of Roberto Calvi.
Tags: Banco Ambrosiano, Blackfriars, bridge, Calvi, Cosa Nostra, Freemasons, IOR, London, Mafia, Marcinkus, Netherlands, P2, Pinochet, Pippo Calo, Roberto, Rome, Thames, Vatican