Thirty years after gruesome death of
IT WAS a very public death. In the grey light of dawn, the body of a man was found hanging from scaffolding underneath Blackfriars Bridge in Central London, his feet dangling in the water. He was wearing an expensive Italian suit and his pockets were weighted with bricks and stuffed with cash.
Initially police believed that Italian financier Roberto Calvi, known as ‘God’s banker’ because of his close financial ties with the Vatican, had committed suicide.
But the dead man’s son, Carlo Calvi, commissioned an independent forensic report, which concluded in October 2002 that he had been murdered.
In 2005, Italian prosecutors brought murder charges against five suspects but all were acquitted after the subsequent trial in Rome.
Now, 30 years after his father was found dead, Carlo remains convinced that he was murdered and wants police to reopen the case.
Carlo believes that up to a dozen men from the Italian underworld were involved in the murder – and claims many are still at large in London.
‘A long time has passed since my father’s murder on June 18, 1982,’ he said. ‘It is not unrealistic to believe that there are individuals involved in his death still alive. I want the City of
‘British police must reopen the case’
London Police to pursue these individuals and put them where they belong. It is a matter of public interest. These people are still operating in London. We should all know who they are and what they are doing.’
Carlo, aged 58 and himself a former banker, has dedicated his life to seeking justice for his father, who was the chairman of Italy’s second-largest bank, Banco Ambrosiano. The bank subsequently collapsed with debts of half a billion pounds amid dark rumours of laundered Mafia drug money, a link with the clandestine ‘P2’ Masonic lodge and secret political slush funds.
Now living in Montreal, Canada, Carlo spends his time travelling between his home and London, New York and Milan – sifting through evidence, meeting secretive contacts willing to talk about Italian organised crime and poring over the transcripts of Mafia trials.
His obsession with finding the men involved in his father’s murder has come at a price – both financial and personal. He has spent £15million on fees for lawyers, private detectives and other experts in an attempt to identify the guilty.
And his marriage to Marie Josee, mother of his two sons, Roberto, 18, and Nicola, 16, broke up in 2000. He has also not seen his sister Anna, 55, a lecturer at Warwick University, since their mother’s death from Parkinson’s disease in 2006.
‘There’s no doubt I have fixated on the case,’ he said. ‘I’m sure that played a part in my divorce and it has affected my relationship with my sister. She doesn’t necessarily agree with the things I have done.’
Carlo was a 28-year-old post-graduate student at Washington’s Georgetown University when he recieved the telephone call that would change his life. His mother Clara, then 60, and sister Anna, 25, were staying with him in Washington, having been warned by his father that their lives were in danger.
‘My mother had been living with me in America for about six weeks because my father feared for her safety,’ he recalled. ‘My sister arrived the day before he died. We were awoken by the telephone in the middle of the night when my uncle Luciano, my mother’s brother, called from Bologna to say that he had heard the news on the radio.
‘He spoke to my mother who had a complete breakdown. She was devastated. We had to call a doctor. I remember telling my uncle that he could have been more careful with his words. I think he was a little too direct.’
Within hours the family had been escorted by American police to a secret apartment in the Watergate complex, famous for the break-in that brought about the fall of President Richard Nixon. They spent the next few weeks under police guard before returning to Carlo’s home.
‘My mother never recovered from my father’s death,’ said Carlo. ‘She and my father had always dreamed of living near Lake Como. They were very close and she remained very attached to her dreams.
‘The following year, she suffered the first symptoms of Parkinson’s. I don’t think she got it as a direct result of my father’s murder – but surely it doesn’t help if you have lived through such a shock?’
Carlo’s quest for the truth began a month after his father’s death when a London inquest recorded a verdict of suicide. It was hardly a likely explanation. Six days before his death, Calvi had shaved off his moustache and skipped bail in Italy pending an appeal against a four-year suspended prison sentence for illegally transferring £18million out of the country.
Fearing for his life, the 62-year-old banker chartered a private plane and fled to Britain on a false passport with Sardinian business tycoon Silvano Vittor, a long-term associate who assumed the role of bodyguard. He was taken to a safe house in Chelsea Cloisters, West London – believed to have been organised by another Sardinian businessman, Flavio Carboni.
Calvi had already written to Pope John Paul II warning him of the imminent collapse of Banco Ambrosiano,