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10/07/2005:
"Five Tried for Italian Banker's '82 Death"
ROME - Five people, including a convicted Mafia figure, went on trial Thursday for murder in the 1982 death of the Italian financier known as "God's banker" for his close ties with the Vatican.ADVERTISEMENT
The body of Roberto Calvi was found hanging from scaffolding under London's Blackfriars Bridge on June 18, 1982, with rocks and cash stuffed into his suit.
Although initially ruled a suicide, his family pressed for further investigation, and Italian prosecutors concluded in 2003 that he had been slain.
Calvi was a key figure in one of modern Italy's biggest banking scandals, which involved elements of the country's power brokers — businessmen, politicians, Masonic groups and the Vatican hierarchy.
He was found dead as his Banco Ambrosiano collapsed following the disappearance of $1.3 billion in loans the bank had provided to several dummy companies in Latin America.
The Vatican had provided letters of credit for the loans, and the Vatican's bank agreed to pay $250 million to Ambrosiano's creditors but denied any wrongdoing.
yahoo.com
This was the moment when, briefly, the international fascist network,the P-2 Masonic cell in Italy, Latin American death squads, the Vatican, the mafia, elements of the U.S. governmant were briefly revealed to be parts of the same many-headed dragon. What transpired after this was the collapse of the Italian government, the bankruptcy of the Continental Bank of Illinois (through which the Vatican Bank laundered $500 million worth of counterfeit Mafia bonds, and very likely, the murder of the first Pope John Paul 33 days into his reign.