Mafia link to Roberto Calvi murder

[emad]

Source: Daily Telegraph

The Mafia was probably behind the infamous 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, who was found hanging from a London bridge and was known as "God's banker" because of his Vatican links, an Italian court has said.

Calvi, the head of the collapsed Banco Ambrosiano, was found dangling from a noose with $15,000 (£7,500) in his pockets and weighed down with bricks under Blackfriars Bridge in central London in what prosecutors argued was a 'suicide' staged by his killers.

A Rome court acquitted two Italian mobsters, a bodyguard, a financier and his girlfriend in June of carrying out the killing.

It did not release the reasons for the acquittal until Wednesday, when it cited a lack of evidence against the accused.


Read more: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/11/22/wcalvi122.xml

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The most recent UK TV documentary reminded viewers of some startling facts in the God's Banker case which often appear to be excised from the public domain.

Calvi's body was found under Blackfriars' Bridge on the River Thames.

That bridge is the first landmark on the river that denotes the boundary of the City of London Police domain which had a totally separate police force to the overall Metropolitan Police turf for the rest of London.

During Margaret Thatcher's tenure of 10 Downing Street (1979 - 1990) the head of the City of London Police reported directly to her as Prime Minister, bypassing the normal admin routes which saw the Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police report to the relatively much more junior Home Secretary.

It took well over 20 years for Calvi's death to be declared a homicide after two successive inquests run under the aegis of the City of London Police found the banker's death was a mere suicide.

Given the enormous pressure Thatcher exorted on Vice President George Herbert Bush to exonerate the Vatican Bank's Cardinal Marcinkus from any blame in the Banco Ambrosian collapse and the Calvi death enquiry, the City of London death scene is of some unique relevance to the solution of the crime.

VP Bush famously granted Marcinkus immunity from prosecution and a safe house in Arizona after the Cardinal fled Italy to avoid proseuction in the £400 million Vatican Bank insolvency.

[Swede]

1. Nothing personal. It's business.

Whaddaya gonna do?

[Reno.Muse]

2. Why mess of illegal proportions is the Bush family not connected to in some way?