The Rome prosecutor's office on
Tuesday asked for a probe into the 1982 death of God's Banker
Roberto Calvi to be shelved.
Calvi, found hanging under London's Blackfriar's Bridge,
had been chairman and managing director of the Banco Ambrosiano,
at the time Italy's biggest private bank.
Under investigation in the case are the former head of the
subversive para-Masonic lodge P2, Licio Gelli, businessman
Flavio Carboni, former spy Francesco Pazienza and his secretary
Maurizio Mazzotta.
Carboni was one of three people already acquitted of
Calvi's murder in 2007.
A Rome prosecutor, Luca Tescaraoli, appealed those
acquittals in December 2010 but was turned down by the high
Court of Cassation.
Calvi's death was originally ruled a suicide but Italian
prosecutors later accused jailed Mafia boss Pippo Calo',
Sardinian wheeler-dealer Carboni and Rome crime boss Ernesto
Diotallevi of premeditated murder.
In June 2007 a lower court acquitted the three on the
grounds of insufficient evidence and in May 2010 a Rome
appeals court upheld the ruling on the same grounds.
In announcing his decision to appeal the sentences late
that year, Tescaroli also asked that the case be sent to another
appeals court for a new trial.
In his 130-page argument for a new appeal, the prosecutor
listed 19 reasons why the three should not have been acquitted,
including that Carboni had given "contradictory, false,
misleading and unlikely" testimony in the course of the
investigation and trials.
Tescaroli also underscored how Calvi's death had ensured
Carboni impunity for the crimes related to the bankruptcy of
Banca Ambrosiano and charges of "money laundering for which he
has since been found guilty".
Prosecutors said they believed Calvi was killed in revenge
for not paying back laundered money to the Mafia.
During the 2010 appeals trial, Tescaroli said Carboni,
Calo' and Diotallevi were helped by the Mafia in staging the
murder and making it look like a suicide.
Tescaroli said Calvi was murdered not only for his
mismanagement of the Mafia's money but also because of the
possibility that he would reveal how it was allegedly laundered
by the Ambrosiano.
He added that there was also a risk that Calvi could give
details of his extensive network of contacts with masonic lodges
- especially the P2 - Vatican bank Istituto per le Opere di
Religione (IOR), political and institutional figures, and
public-sector agencies.
The investigation into the death of Calvi, who earned the
nickname 'God's Banker' by working closely with IOR, was
re-opened 13 years ago.
Calvi was found hanging under the well-known London
landmark in June 17, 1982, pockets bulging with banknotes and
bricks. The suicide verdict came a few months after his death.
A second autopsy indicated that someone put the bricks in
Calvi's pockets before stringing him up.
According to theories aired over the years by informants,
Calvi worked hand-in-hand with Mafia-linked banker Michele
Sindona - killed in jail by a poisoned cup of coffee in 1986 -
to set up a complicated web of banking and insurance interests.
Many paths were smoothed, the informants said, by his
membership of the lodge led by Gelli who, now 95, is under house
arrest after receiving a 12-year sentence for the Ambrosiano
collapse.
Carboni leapt back into this spotlight in July 2010 when he
was arrested in connection with a probe into the alleged rigging
of public works tenders in Sardinia.
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