Who killed ‘God’s banker’?

last updated 8 January 2015

Rome

Five people accused of murdering banker Roberto Calvi were acquitted last week, deepening the mystery that has long surrounded his death. Calvi, who was found hanged from scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982, was a prominent Italian banker with close ties to the Vatican’s bank. Documents show he was trying to blackmail the Vatican, threatening to reveal the ways the Vatican bank was funding anti-communist groups and laundering Mafia money. The death was initially ruled a suicide, but the coroner later found that Calvi could not have maneuvered out onto the scaffolding alone. In 1991, a Mafia informer revealed some of Calvi’s Mafia connections, prompting renewed investigations that finally led to indictments in 2005. Last week’s ruling acquitted the five defendants, mostly shady businessmen, “for lack of evidence,” a phrase that in Italian law is less exonerating than “not guilty.”