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71-577: Roberto Calvi (13 April 1920 – 17 June 1982) was an Italian banker , dubbed "God's Banker" ( Italian : Banchiere di Dio ) by the press because of his close business dealings with the Holy See . He was a native of Milan and was chairman of Banco Ambrosiano , which collapsed in one of Italy's biggest political scandals. Calvi's death by hanging in London in June 1982 is a source of enduring controversy and

142-605: A decree granting Gelli the Gran Cruz de la Orden del Libertador in August 1974, as well as the honorary office of economic counselor in the embassy of Argentina in Italy. Gelli publicly declared on repeated occasions that he was a close friend of Perón, although no confirmation ever came from South America. Gelli affirmed that he introduced Peron to Masonry and that this friendship was of real importance for Italy. He stated: "Peron

213-691: A catastrophe of unimaginable proportions in which the Church will suffer the gravest damage." The correspondence confirmed that illegal transactions were common knowledge among the top affiliates of the bank and the Vatican. Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in June 1982 following the discovery of debts between US$ 700 million and 1.5 billion. Much of the money had been transferred through the Vatican Bank , which owned shares in Banco Ambrosiano. In 1984,

284-578: A controlling interest in Long Island 's Franklin National Bank . Two years later, the bank collapsed. Convicted in 1980 in the US, "mysterious Michele" was extradited to Italy. Two years later, he was poisoned in his cell while serving a life sentence. The P2 membership list was authenticated, with a few exceptions, by a 1984 parliamentary report. On the run, Gelli escaped to Switzerland where he

355-523: A court in San Remo for illegally exporting money from Italy. Switzerland eventually agreed to extradite him to Italy, but only on financial charges stemming from the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. Gelli's extradition in February 1988 required a high-level security apparatus, including 100 sharpshooters , decoy cars, a train, road blocks and two armored cars to transfer him to Italy. In July 1988 he

426-831: A member of the Banda della Magliana , were also alleged to be involved in the killing. In July 2003, Italian prosecutors concluded that the Sicilian Mafia acted in its own interests and to ensure that Calvi could not blackmail them. Gelli was the master of the P2 lodge, and he received a notification on 19 July 2005 informing him that he was formally under investigation on charges of ordering Calvi's contract killing , along with Calò, Diotallevi, Flavio Carboni , and Carboni's Austrian girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig . The other four suspects had been indicted on murder charges in April. According to

497-462: A promise of labour services or a substantial share of the crop. The terms of such "loans" compelled defaulters to sell themselves, or their dependants, to their creditor; or, if smallholders, to surrender their farm. Wealthy aristocratic Etruscan and Roman landholders thus acquired additional farms and service for very little outlay. It has been argued that this loan system can be considered an embryonic version of banking as practiced in antiquity. With

568-544: A scandal in 1974, when the Holy See lost an estimated US$ 30 million upon the collapse of the Franklin National Bank owned by financier Michele Sindona . Bad loans and foreign currency transactions led to the collapse of the bank. Sindona died in prison after drinking coffee laced with cyanide . Calvi wrote a letter of warning to Pope John Paul II on 5 June 1982, two weeks before the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano , stating that such an event would "provoke

639-487: A second investigation by June 2007 implicating Gelli and others. In May 2009, the prosecution dropped the case against Gelli. According to the magistrate, there was insufficient evidence to argue that Gelli had played a role in planning and executing the crime. On 7 May 2010, the Court of Appeals confirmed the acquittal of Calò, Carboni, and Diotallevi. Public prosecutor Luca Tescaroli commented that "Calvi has been murdered for

710-607: Is an extraordinary man, a man of action. This is what Italy needs: not a man of words, but a man of action. He talked of many Italian politicians. Of Fabrizio Cicchitto , he said he knew him well ( è bravo, preparato  — "he's good and capable"). With regard to Berlusconi's program for the reform of the judicial system, he boasted that this had been an integral part of his original project. He also approved of Berlusconi's reorganization of television networks. On 15 December 2015 Gelli died in Arezzo, Tuscany, aged 96. The funeral home

781-453: Is featured in the Italian film Il divo (2008), a biography of former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti . Italian banker However, savings banks organized on a provincial or regional basis in addition to investment institutions that issue bonds and provide medium- and long-term credit for public works and agriculture provide additional financial services. Unicredit

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852-484: Is one of the largest banks in Europe by capitalization and Assicurazioni Generali is the seventh largest bank in the world by total assets . The Etruscans and the early Romans did not have true minted coinage for many centuries. Debt and debt bondage , however, were probably rife. Wealthy landowners would make an "advance loan" of seed, foodstuffs or other essentials to tenants, clients and smallholders, in return for

923-510: 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". Katz said that it was "probably true" that the Mafia carried out the killing, but that the gangsters suspected of the crime were either dead or missing. The verdict in the trial was not the end of the matter, since the prosecutor's office in Rome had opened

994-625: The Movimiento Revolucionario Nacional Sindicalista (National-Syndicalist Revolutionary Movement ), declared to La Tercera de la Hora that Gelli was then in Pinochet's Chile . Finally, in 1987, Gelli secretly came back to Switzerland in the car of his lawyer Marc Bonnant and surrendered in Geneva to investigative judge Jean-Pierre Trembley. He was wanted in connection with the 1982 collapse of

1065-712: The Banco Ambrosiano and on charges of subversive association in connection with the 1980 Bologna railway station bombing , which killed 85 people. He was sentenced to two months in prison in Switzerland, while an Italian court in Florence sentenced him on 15 December 1987, in absentia , to eight years in prison on charges of financing right-wing terrorist activity in Tuscany in the 1970s. Gelli had already been sentenced in absentia to 14 months in jail by

1136-595: The Bank of Italy , the nation's first central bank , as part of massive reforms to the banking sector. Italy had 11 banking groups (excluding banking group that owned by foreign banks) that were supervised by the European Central Bank directly. According to Mediobanca, the overall number of banks and credits institutions in Italy stands at 439 in 2022, which is a sharp decrease from the 740 that were operating in 2011. However, ECB considered ICCREA Banca ,

1207-569: The Spanish Civil War . He served as liaison officer between the Italian government and Nazi Germany. and participated in the Italian Social Republic with Giorgio Almirante , founder of the neofascist Italian Social Movement (MSI). After a sales job with the Italian mattress factory Permaflex, Gelli founded his own textile and importing company. In 1970, in the plans of the failed Golpe Borghese , Gelli

1278-469: 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. It has never been confirmed whether the Vatican Bank was directly involved in the scandal due to a lack of evidence in the subpoenaed correspondence, which only revealed that Calvi consistently supported the Vatican's religious agenda. Calvi committed

1349-415: The 25 years that had elapsed since Calvi's death. Additionally, key witnesses were unwilling to testify , untraceable, or dead. The prosecution called for Manuela Kleinszig to be cleared, stating that there was insufficient evidence against her, but they sought life sentences for the four men. Katz claimed that it was likely that senior figures in the Italian establishment escaped prosecution. "The problem

1420-665: The Agency for Economic Development, which he and Umberto Ortolani owned. Several members of the Argentine military junta have been found to be P2 members, such as Raúl Alberto Lastiri , Argentina's interim president from 13 July 1973 until 12 October 1973, Emilio Massera , part of Jorge Videla 's military junta from 1976 to 1978, and José López Rega , the infamous founder of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance ("Triple A"). The lodge P2, also known as

1491-476: The Argentine embassy in Rome. Gelli was also named minister plenipotentiary for cultural affairs in the Argentine embassy in Italy, thus providing him with diplomatic immunity . He had four diplomatic passports issued by Argentina, and has been charged in Argentina with falsification of official documents. During the 1970s, Gelli brokered three-way oil and arms deals between Libya, Italy and Argentina through

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1562-537: 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 a senior case manager for the company in London. As part of his two-year investigation, Katz hired a former Home Office forensic scientist, Angela Gallop , to undertake forensic tests. She found that Calvi could not have hanged himself from

1633-518: The Mafia. The Mafia also wanted to prevent Calvi from revealing how the bank had been used for money laundering . Gelli's name, however, was not in the final indictment at the trial that started in October 2005, and the other accused were eventually acquitted due to "insufficient evidence" , though by the time of these acquittals in June 2007, the prosecutor's office in Rome had opened a second investigation implicating Gelli, among others. In May 2009,

1704-404: The P2 "democratic rebirth plan" was being implemented by Silvio Berlusconi : Every morning I speak to my conscience and the dialogue calms me down. I look at the country, read the newspaper, and think: "All is becoming a reality little by little, piece by piece. To be truthful, I should have had the copyright to it. Justice, TV, public order. I wrote about this thirty years ago ... Berlusconi

1775-707: The Propaganda Due, was also linked to the robbery of Juan Perón's severed hands. In 1981 Gelli was one of the very few Italians to be invited to President Reagan's oath . In 1990 a report on RAI Television alleged that the CIA had paid Gelli to instigate terrorist activities in Italy. Following this report, which also claimed that the CIA had been involved in the assassination of the Swedish Prime minister Olof Palme , then President Francesco Cossiga requested

1846-587: The Swedish police closed their investigation into Olof Palme's assassination, assigning blame to Stig Engström, a Swedish graphic designer and centre-right municipal activist who was not affiliated with the CIA. Gelli's downfall started with the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, which led to a 1981 police raid on his villa and the discovery of the P2 covert lodge. On 17 March 1981 a police raid on his villa in Arezzo led to

1917-523: The bank after World War II , but he moved to Banco Ambrosiano , then Italy's second largest bank, in 1947. He married in 1952 and had two children. Soon he became the personal assistant of Carlo Alessandro Canesi, a leading figure and later president of Banco Ambrosiano. Calvi was the bank's general manager in 1971 and chairman in 1975. 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. Calvi

1988-467: The beginning of the trial of 16 members of the P2 Masonic Lodge, which included charges of conspiracy against the state, espionage, and the revelation of state secrets. In April 1994 Gelli received a 17-year sentence for divulging state secrets and slandering the investigation, while the court threw out the charge that P2 members conspired against the state; Gelli's sentence was reduced, and he

2059-694: The case against Gelli was dropped. According to the magistrate there was insufficient evidence to argue that Gelli had played a role in the planning and execution of the crime. Gelli has been implicated in Aldo Moro 's murder, since the Italian chief of intelligence, accused of negligence, was a piduista (P2 member). In 1996, Gelli was nominated as a candidate for the Nobel Prize in Literature , supported by Mother Teresa and Naguib Mahfouz . In 2003 Gelli told La Repubblica that it seemed that

2130-527: The cause of his death. In July 1991, Sicilian Mafia pentito Francesco Marino Mannoia claimed that Roberto Calvi became the victim of a contract killing because he had lost money belonging to senior Mafia bosses when Banco Ambrosiano collapsed. According to Mannoia, the killer was Francesco Di Carlo , a mafioso living in London at the time, on the orders of Giuseppe Calò and Propaganda Due Worshipful Master Licio Gelli . Di Carlo also became an cooperating witness in June 1996 and denied that he

2201-423: The charges, citing "insufficient evidence" after hearing 20 months of evidence. The court ruled that Calvi's death was murder and not suicide. The defence suggested that there were plenty of people with a motive for Calvi's murder, including Vatican officials and Mafia figures who wanted to ensure his silence. Legal experts following the trial said that the prosecutors found it hard to present a convincing case due to

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2272-567: The clearing house of Italian cooperative banks federation as one banking group, which the publication of Mediobanca considered the cooperative banks are individual entities, such as Banca di Credito Cooperativo di Roma was ranked 22nd in the publication, while ICCREA Banca and Bank of Italy were excluded from the publication. The following is a list of the main Italian banks ranked by total assets and risk-weighted assets . Licio Gelli Licio Gelli ( Italian pronunciation: [ˈliːtʃo ˈdʒɛlli] ; 21 April 1919 – 15 December 2015)

2343-505: The crime of fiscal misconduct, and there was no evidence of church involvement otherwise, so the Vatican was granted immunity . Calvi went missing from his Rome apartment on 10 June 1982, having fled the country on a false passport under the name Gian Roberto Calvini, fleeing initially to Venice . From there, he apparently hired a private plane to London via Zürich . A postal clerk was crossing London's Blackfriars Bridge at 7:30 am on Friday, 18 June and noticed Calvi's body hanging from

2414-533: The discovery of a list of 962 persons composed of Italian military officers and civil servants, including the heads of the three Italian secret services, involved in Propaganda Due (also known as "P2"), a clandestine lodge expelled from the Grande Oriente d'Italia Masonic organization. Future Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was on the list, although he had not yet entered politics. He

2485-579: The event. In September 2003, the City of London Police re-opened their investigation as a murder inquiry. More evidence arose, revealing that Calvi stayed in a flat in Chelsea Cloisters just prior to his death. Sergio Vaccari was a small-time drug dealer who had stayed in the same flat, and he 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

2556-440: The eventual expansion of Roman monetization, a variety of officials came to be associated with banking in ancient Rome . These were the argentarii , mensarii , coactores , and nummulari ; many of these roles were derived from Etruscan practices. The argentarii were money changers . The role of the mensarii was to help people through economic hardships, the coactores were hired to collect money and give it to their employer, and

2627-470: The fall of Arnaldo Forlani 's cabinet in June 1981 The P2 lodge had some form of power in Italy, given the public prominence of its members, and many observers still consider it to be extremely strong. Several famous people in Italy today (starting with the top TV anchor-man Maurizio Costanzo ) were affiliated with P2. Among these Michele Sindona , a banker with clear connections to the Mafia , has been clearly associated with P2. In 1972, Sindona purchased

2698-499: The first arrest of a UK witness who had allegedly committed perjury during the Calvi inquest. On 5 October 2005, the trial began in Rome of the five individuals charged with Calvi's murder. 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. All five were cleared of murdering Calvi on 6 June 2007. Judge Mario Lucio d'Andria threw out

2769-611: The hanging. 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 he had been taken by boat from a point of access to the Thames in West London. This aspect of Calvi's death was the focus of the theory that he was murdered, and is the version of events depicted in Giuseppe Ferrara's film reconstruction of

2840-459: The indictment, the five ordered the murder to prevent Calvi "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". Gelli

2911-740: The killing was commissioned in the People's Republic of 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. However, Gelli's name was not in the final indictment at the trial which started in October 2005. 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

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2982-495: The lead role, directed by Peter Richardson , and co-written by him and Pete Richens . Variety magazine described the comedy film The Pope Must Die (1991) as "loosely based on the Roberto Calvi banking scandal". In the 2009 film The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus , the character of Tony is found hanging alive under Blackfriars Bridge, which director Terry Gilliam described as "an homage to Roberto Calvi". Calvi

3053-580: The most famous Italian banks was the Medici Bank , set up by Giovanni di Bicci de' Medici in 1397. The earliest known state deposit bank, Banco di San Giorgio (Bank of St. George), was founded in 1407 in Genoa , Italy , while Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena , founded in 1472, is the oldest surviving bank in the world. In 1893, following the Banca Romana scandal , the Italian government formed

3124-605: The murder of Roberto Calvi, along with former Mafia boss Giuseppe Calò (also known as "Pippo Calò"), businessmen Ernesto Diotallevi and Flavio Carboni, and the latter's girlfriend, Manuela Kleinszig. In his statement before the court Gelli blamed people connected with Calvi's work in financing the Polish Solidarity movement, allegedly on behalf of the Vatican . He was accused of having provoked Calvi's death in order to punish him for having embezzled money owed to him and

3195-590: The nummulari minted and tested currency . They offered credit systems and loans. Between 260 and the fourth century CE Roman bankers disappear from the historical record, likely because of economic difficulties caused by the debasement of the currency. The origins of modern banking can be traced to the medieval and early Italian Renaissance , to the rich cities in the north like Florence , Lucca , Siena , Venice , and Genoa . The Bardi and Peruzzi families dominated banking in 14th-century Florence, establishing branches in many other parts of Europe . One of

3266-560: The opening of investigations while the CIA itself officially denied these allegations. Critics have claimed the RAI report to be a fraud because of the inclusion of testimony from Richard Brenneke , who claimed to be a former CIA agent and made several declarations concerning the October surprise conspiracy . Brenneke's background was also investigated by a U.S. Senate subcommittee, which dismissed Brenneke's claims of CIA employment. In June 2020,

3337-607: The right-wing opposition (the Northern League and the ex-Christian Democratic splinter groups CDU - CDR ), against the Justice Minister, Giovanni Maria Flick , and the Interior Minister, Giorgio Napolitano , stating that Gelli had benefited from accomplices helping him in his escape. They also made reference to secret negotiations which would have allowed him to reappear without going to prison. But

3408-535: 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. Calvi's body was exhumed in December 1998, and an Italian court commissioned a German forensic scientist to repeat the work produced by Katz and his forensic team. That report

3479-411: The scaffolding beneath. Calvi had five bricks in his pockets and had in his possession about US$ 14,000 in three different currencies. 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

3550-495: The second time." On 18 November 2011, the Court of Cassation confirmed the acquittal. Calò is still serving a life sentence on unrelated Mafia charges. BBC One's programme Panorama chronicled Calvi's last days and uncovered new evidence which suggested that others had been involved in his death. The 1983 PBS Frontline documentary "God's Banker" investigated Calvi's links with the Vatican and P2, and questioned whether his death

3621-478: The two deaths and confirming Calvi's ties to the lodge. Calvi's life was insured for US$ 10 million with Unione Italiana. His family's attempts to obtain a payout resulted in litigation ( Fisher v Unione Italiana [1998] CLC 682). The forensic report of 2002 established that Calvi had been murdered and 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

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3692-616: The two ministers won the confidence vote. Police found $ 2M worth of gold ingots in Gelli's villa. A few years after the Ambrosiano scandal, many suspects pointed toward Gelli with reference to his possible involvement in the murder of the Milanese banker Roberto Calvi , also known as "God's banker", who had been jailed in the wake of the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano. On 19 July 2005 Gelli was formally indicted by Roman Magistrates for

3763-415: The word "Blackfriars". The day before his body was found, Calvi was stripped of his post at Banco Ambrosiano by the Bank of Italy , and his 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

3834-556: Was a Mason, I initiated him in Madrid in Puerta de Hierro , in June 1973." Gelli become the main economic and financial consultant of Isabel Perón and of José López Rega . According to a letter sent by Gelli to César de la Vega, a P2 member and Argentine ambassador to the UNESCO , Gelli commissioned P2 member Federico Carlos Barttfeld to be transferred from the consulate of Hamburg to

3905-490: Was absolved of charges of subversive association by a Bologna court but was presented with a five-year prison term for slander, having side-tracked the investigation into the 1980 bombing of the Bologna train station . Stipulations connected to his extradition, however, prevented him from serving time. Two years later, an appeal court threw out Gelli's slander conviction. A retrial was ordered in October 1993. In 1992 Gelli

3976-408: Was accused of demanding Calvi's death as punishment for embezzling money from Banco Ambrosiano that belonged both to Gelli and to senior figures in the Mafia. The Mafia allegedly wanted to prevent Calvi from revealing that the Banco Ambrosiano had been used for money laundering . Gelli denied involvement, but acknowledged that the financier was murdered. In his statement before the court, he said that

4047-541: Was an Italian Freemason and businessman. A Fascist volunteer in his youth, he is chiefly known for his role in the Banco Ambrosiano scandal . He was revealed in 1981 as being the Venerable Master of the clandestine masonic lodge Propaganda Due (P2). Gelli was born in Pistoia , Tuscany . During the 1930s, Gelli, when he was still a seventeen-year-old student in a Liceo Classico high school in Pistoia ,

4118-477: Was arrested on 13 September 1982 while trying to withdraw tens of millions of dollars in Geneva. Detained in the modern Champ-Dollon Prison near Geneva , he managed to escape and then fled to South America for four years. In 1984 Jorge Vargas, the secretary general of the Unión Nacionalista de Chile (UNACH, Nationalist Union of Chile, a short-lived National Socialist party ) and a former member of

4189-607: Was expelled from all schools in Italy and left as a volunteer to fight in Spain with the Fascist Brigades that supported Generalissimo Franco. It was in the fighting of Malaga that his older brother Raffaello died. The youngest recruit in his contingent, he was decorated by Franco himself. Gelli also volunteered for the Blackshirts expeditionary forces sent by Mussolini in support of Francisco Franco 's rebellion in

4260-631: Was placed under house arrest two years later. In April 1998 the Court of Cassation confirmed a 12-year sentence for the Ambrosiano crash. Gelli then disappeared on the eve of being imprisoned, in May 1998, while being under house arrest in his mansion near Arezzo . His disappearance was strongly suspected to be the result of being forewarned. Then, finally, he was arrested in the French Riviera in Cannes . Two motions of no confidence were made by

4331-460: 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 his body was found, the River Thames had receded with the tide, but the scaffolding could have been reached by a person standing in a boat at the time of

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4402-727: Was published in which he named as his only "spiritual heir" the Romanian general Bartolomeu Constantin Săvoiu , Grand Master of the Romanian National Lodge. On 11 February 2006, Licio Gelli donated his "non-secret archive" to the State Archives of Pistoia, as part of an official ceremony, held under the patronage of the Municipality. However, the municipal administrators of Pistoia preferred not to take part in

4473-431: Was really a suicide. The circumstances surrounding his death were made into the feature film I Banchieri di Dio - Il Caso Calvi (God's Bankers - The Calvi Case) in 2001. A heavily fictionalized version of Calvi appears in The Godfather Part III in the character of Frederick Keinszig. In 1990, The Comic Strip Presents produced a spoof version of Calvi's story under the title Spaghetti Hoops , with Nigel Planer in

4544-460: Was ruled a murder after two coroners' inquests and an independent investigation. Five people were acquitted in Rome in June 2007 of conspiracy to murder Roberto Calvi. Popular suspicion has linked his death to allegedly corrupt officials of the Vatican Bank , the Sicilian Mafia , and the Continental Freemasonry lodge Propaganda Due . Roberto Calvi's father was the manager of the Banca Commerciale Italiana (Italian Commercial Bank). Calvi joined

4615-419: Was sentenced to 18 years and six months of prison after being found guilty of fraud concerning the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano in 1982 (a "black hole" of $ 1.4 billion was found). The Vatican bank, Istituto per le Opere di Religione , main share-holder of the Banco Ambrosiano, consequently had a "black hole" of $ 250 million. This sentence was reduced by the Court of Appeal to 12 years. The year 1992 also saw

4686-449: Was set up in Villa Wanda. The funeral Mass was celebrated on December 17 in the Church of Mercy of Pistoia , his native town, in the presence of relatives and onlookers and relatively few VIPs. During the funeral, access to the church was prevented by a private security agency. The body was transferred to the family chapel of the Cemetery of Mercy in Pistoia, where his first wife Wanda already rested. After his death, an autographed will

4757-505: Was tasked with arresting the Italian President, Giuseppe Saragat . As Master of the Propaganda Due (P2) lodge, Gelli had ties with very high level personalities in Italy and abroad, in particular in Argentina , where he was a fugitive for many years. The regular Masonic lodge was enjoyed by Guillermo Suárez Mason and José López Rega , two key-exponents of the Argentine military junta . The Argentine Chancellor Alberto Vignes drafted with Juan Perón , who had returned from exile in 1973,

4828-450: Was the killer, but he admitted that Calò had approached him to commit the murder. According to Di Carlo, the killers were Vaccari and Vincenzo Casillo , who belonged to the Camorra from Naples and both of whom were later murdered. In 1997, Italian prosecutors in Rome implicated Calò in Calvi's murder, along with Flavio Carboni , an allegedly mobbed up Sardinian businessman with wide-ranging interests. Di Carlo and Ernesto Diotallevi ,

4899-412: Was the subject of two coroners' inquests in London. The first recorded a verdict of suicide in July 1982. The Calvi family then secured the services of George Carman , QC . The second inquest was held in July 1983, and 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,

4970-401: Was then known as the founder and owner of "Canale 5" TV channel, and was listed as a member of P2. A Parliamentary Commission, directed by Tina Anselmi (of the Christian Democratic party ), found no evidence of crimes, but in 1981 the Italian parliament passed a law banning secret associations in Italy. Gelli was expelled from GOI freemasonry on 31 October 1981, and the P2 scandal provoked

5041-485: Was tried in 1981, 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, Calvi attempted suicide. His family maintains that he was manipulated by others and was innocent of the crimes attributed to him. The controversy surrounding Calvi's dealings at Banco Ambrosiano echoed

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