Calvi Murder Suspects Linked to Organized Crime, Witness Says
Dec. 1 (Bloomberg) -- Flavio Carboni, one of the five people accused of murdering Roberto Calvi 23 years ago, helped the Sicilian Mafia launder money, said turncoat Francesco Di Carlo, the first prosecution witness testifying in the trial.
Giuseppe ``Pippo'' Calo, a convicted Sicilian Mafia boss, is accused of ordering the killing of Calvi, known as ``God's Banker'' because of his ties to the Vatican. Four others, including Carboni, organized the killing, the prosecution says.
``People said Carboni was good at making investments, such as construction in Sardinia, with money that Calo gave him,'' said Di Carlo, who testified today behind blinds to keep his appearance secret at a bunker courthouse in Rome. Di Carlo, a state's witness since 1996, was a member of the Sicilian mob, known as Cosa Nostra.
Calvi was the chairman and chief executive officer of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's largest private bank before its collapse after he died in 1982. He was 62. Prosecutors say they will show that Ambrosiano helped the mob launder money and was at the center of a web that included the Mafia, the drugs trade, and the Vatican.
``I've never done business at all with Calo. Nothing,'' Carboni told reporters after Di Carlo's testimony. ``I met Calo three or four times. That was it.'' Carboni denies any connection to the murder of Calvi.
Underworld Ties
Lead prosecutor Luca Tescaroli used Di Carlo's testimony to try and establish the underworld ties of three of the accused murderers. Ernesto Diotallevi, one of the five suspects on trial, met Calo met when he was in Rome, Di Carlo said today.
Calo and Diotallevi had no connection to Calvi's death, their lawyers repeated again today. The others charged are Carboni's ex-girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig, Silvano Vittor. Kleinszig and Vittor also deny the charges. Only Carboni was present in the courtroom, while Calo was video-linked from a prison in Ascoli Piceno, Italy.
Prosecutors have spent more than two decades gathering enough evidence to bring the case to trial. The impetus came from a 2002 forensic report by German scientist Bernd Brinkmann, who said Calvi couldn't have killed himself and that he was murdered by strangulation.
Calvi's body was found hanging under London's Blackfriar's Bridge on June 18, 1982.
The Mafia murdered Calvi because it no longer trusted him to launder their drug money, and because he had threatened to reveal their secrets, prosecutors say. Prosecutors condensed two-and-a-half decades of investigations and trials that produced 150,000 pages of information into their 316-page report dated Dec. 28, 2004.
Prosecutors say they will show that the Istituto per l'Opere di Religione, commonly known as the Vatican bank, was used as an ``offshore'' vehicle by Calvi's Banco Ambrosiano to export money.
To contact the reporter on this story:
Steve Scherer in Rome at scherer@bloomberg.net.
Last Updated: December 1, 2005 09:07 EST
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