The Mystery of Roberto Calvi (according to my Dad)!

I was lucky enough to grow up in the heart of London, literally IN the City of London. My father worked on one of the exchanges and always insisted on being able to walk to work. His walk consisted of turning left out of the house towards Blackfriars bridge and left again into the city. On Friday the 18th June 1982 he was surprised to notice a police presence, so being a curious (or nosey) soul took a very short detour to see what had caused the commotion. Having established from a friendly policeman that a body was found he continued his journey to work.

I cannot remember how quickly information started to filter through about the identity of the man and the situation. What I do remember clearly was a continuous (and I found rather boring at the time) discussion about how a fat, unhealthy banker had managed to climb nimbly across some scaffold to hang himself. My mother was always rather bothered about the fact that he had such a strange collection of possessions; some were not the obvious items to remember for a man about to top himself!

The interest barely had time to settle before my mother found herself on the jury for the first inquest into his death. The court returned a verdict of suicide with a majority of ten to two. My mother was one of the two who couldn’t accept the possibility that a sixty-two-year-old, over weight banker left home with his passport, $15,000 and his suppositories; then decided not to flee the country but instead fill his pockets with bricks and commit suicide.

My family never lost their interest in the story and the final version of events which seemed accepted by all was that the Freemasons had finished off the banker. Here is the shortened version of their research and conclusions.

First a little background. Calvi was nicknamed ‘Gods banker’ because of his close ties with the Church of Rome, he official title was chairman of Banco Ambrosiano. A year before Calvi’s death he was tried and given a suspended sentence for breaking Italian currency laws, this did not affect his position at the bank (bankers and the law have a special relationship which still lives on today...) Just two weeks before the collapse of the Banco Ambrosiano and Calvi’s own death he wrote to Pope John Paul II and warned of a coming catastrophe. Calvi was not in control, but he was in the know!

One theory is that the Mafia killed Calvi because they lost huge amounts of money when Banco Ambrosiano collapsed. The problem with this theory was that it appeared that the Mafia had helped Calvi escape Italy by supplying a false passport and organising him route to London via Switzerland. If the Mafia was going to bump him off, why not do it in Italy? Perhaps Calvi was more valuable to the Mafia alive than dead. That leaves the question ‘who could the Mafia blackmail with the secrets of Banco Ambrosiano?’ Answer: the P2 Freemasons lodge and the Vatican. (On a side note, my father was friends with the daughter of a Mafia hitman and she was adamant that this was not a Mafia job!)

Option 1, the Vatican. They did have a shareholding in the Ambrosiano, about 10% and they were for the second time going to lose money due to a bank collapsing. Is it possible that they ordered the killing of Calvi? Yes, it is definitely possible, but in 1984 the Vatican bank paid out $250 million to creditors of Banco Ambrosiano. If they had organised the killing of the banker, it would be strange that they would have left themselves exposed for such a huge amount of money. This payment suggests that they were not in control of the situation.

That leaves the Freemasons. The P2 lodge referred to themselves as ‘frati neri’ which translates into ‘black friars’; the name of the bridge where Calvi was found hanging. This lodge was often referred to as the ‘shadow government of Italy’ because of its immense power and the large number of members who are also in the ‘official’ hierarchy of the country. It was in the interests of P2 to keep Italian secrets in Italy. They would not have supported the removal of Calvi to London. For years Calvi had access to the names and details of illegal Italian financial transactions; exchanging these for his freedom could not be allowed to happen. The message here appears to be that you can run from Italy and the law, but you cannot run from Blackfriars aka frati neri aka P2.

There are many other details which have emerged over the years. Roberto Calvi had a son, he was due to receive a lot of money on his father death, a staggering $10 million – so long as it was not suicide. A second inquest did return an open verdict, but still the insurance was not paid out to his son. When finally, the payment was made in 2002 I believe a large segment went to the liquidators of the bank.

In 1998 Roberto Calvi’s body was exhumed and the following conclusions formed.
• Calvi had never touched the bricks in his pockets
• His neck injuries were consistent with strangulation, not hanging
• There was no rust or paint on his shoes, so he never climbed on the scaffold where he was found.