ITALY:As the Roberto Calvi trial concludes few answers to his mysterious death on London's Blackfriar's Bridge have emerged, writes Tony Barberin Rome
All five defendants in one of Europe's most unusual murder cases were acquitted yesterday of killing Roberto Calvi, the Italian financier known as "God's banker", on account of his illicit work for the Vatican's bank.
The Rome court where the case has been heard since October 2005 acquitted four of the defendants on the grounds that there was "insufficient proof" they had murdered Calvi.
The court fully acquitted the fifth. The verdict was delivered almost 25 years after Calvi's body was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London, his clothes stuffed with bricks, stones and cash in a variety of currencies. The acquittals, which may be challenged, left an air of uncertainty over how Calvi died and why.
Lawyers for the main defendants argued that he had probably committed suicide or, at least, that there was no proof he had been murdered. Among the most important of the defendants was Giuseppe "Pippo" Calò, a Sicilian mafia boss who is serving multiple life sentences for crimes. Prosecutors alleged that Calò had ordered Calvi's murder.
Another defendant was Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian property developer who accompanied Calvi on the secret trip that he made from Italy to the UK, using a false passport, just days before his death in June 1982. Other defendants included Ernesto Diotallevi, a businessman with alleged ties to the Roman underworld, and Silvano Vittor, a former smuggler who was Calvi's driver and bodyguard.
Manuela Kleinszig, a fifth defendant, who was Mr Carboni's mistress at the time of the murder, was found not guilty because the prosecutors asked for her acquittal. Although British police in 1982 treated Calvi's death as suicide, the authorities in Rome were always convinced that it was linked to his connections with the Vatican's bank, the secret Propaganda Due (P2) masonic lodge and Italian political parties.
Calvi, who was chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, a private bank, laundered money through the Vatican's bank, financed clandestine arms deals and channelled funds illegally to Italy's political parties.
Prosecutors alleged that Calò and the three other male defendants killed Calvi as a punishment for embezzling mafia funds, to protect the profits from Banco Ambrosiano's illegal activities, prevent Calvi from revealing what he knew about the Vatican's bank, P2 and other sensitive matters.
Prosecutors in Rome started a new investigation in 1998 and concluded that Calvi had been killed at Blackfriars Bridge.