27 Facts About Roberto Calvi

Roberto Calvi was an Italian banker, dubbed "God's Banker" by the press because of his close business dealings with the Holy See.

Roberto Calvi was a native of Milan and was chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, which collapsed in one of Italy's biggest political scandals.

Roberto Calvi's father was the manager of the Banca Commerciale Italiana.

Roberto Calvi joined the bank after World War II, but he moved to Banco Ambrosiano, then Italy's second-largest bank, in 1947.

Roberto Calvi was the bank's general manager in 1971 and chairman in 1975.

Roberto Calvi was tried in 1981, given a four-year suspended sentence, and fined US$19.8 million for transferring US$27 million out of the country in violation of Italian currency laws.

Roberto Calvi was released on bail pending appeal and kept his position at the bank.

Roberto Calvi's family maintains that he was manipulated by others and was innocent of the crimes attributed to him.

Roberto Calvi committed the crime of fiscal misconduct, and there was no evidence of church involvement otherwise, so the Vatican was granted immunity.

Roberto Calvi had five bricks in his pockets and had in his possession about US$14,000 in three different currencies.

The day before his body was found, Roberto Calvi was stripped of his post at Banco Ambrosiano by the Bank of Italy, and his private secretary Graziella Corrocher jumped to her death from a fifth-floor window at the bank's headquarters.

Corrocher left behind an angry note condemning the damage that Roberto Calvi had done to the bank and its employees.

Roberto Calvi's death was the subject of two coroners' inquests in London.

Roberto Calvi's family maintained that his death had been a murder.

In 1991, the Roberto Calvi family commissioned the New York-based investigation company Kroll Associates to investigate the circumstances of Roberto Calvi's death.

Roberto Calvi found that Calvi could not have hanged himself from the scaffolding because the lack of paint and rust on his shoes proved that he had not walked on the scaffolding.

Roberto Calvi's body was exhumed in December 1998, and an Italian court commissioned a German forensic scientist to repeat the work produced by Katz and his forensic team.

That had been the conclusion of a separate report by Katz in 1992, which detailed a reconstruction based on Roberto Calvi's last known movements in London and theorized that he had been taken by boat from a point of access to the Thames in West London.

Roberto Calvi's life was insured for US$10 million with Unione Italiana.

The forensic report of 2002 established that Roberto Calvi had been murdered and the policy was finally settled, although around half of the sum was paid to creditors of the Roberto Calvi family who incurred considerable costs during their attempts to establish the cause of his death.

In July 1991, Sicilian Mafia pentito Francesco Marino Mannoia claimed that Roberto Calvi became the victim of a contract killing because he had lost money belonging to senior Mafia bosses when Banco Ambrosiano collapsed.

Gelli was the master of the P2 lodge, and he received a notification on 19 July 2005 informing him that he was formally under investigation on charges of ordering Roberto Calvi's contract killing, along with Calo, Diotallevi, Flavio Carboni, and Carboni's Austrian girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig.

The Mafia allegedly wanted to prevent Roberto Calvi from revealing that the Banco Ambrosiano had been used for money laundering.

In 2005, the Italian magistrates investigating Roberto Calvi's death took their inquiries to London in order to question witnesses.

The court ruled that Roberto Calvi's death was murder and not suicide.

The defence suggested that there were plenty of people with a motive for Roberto Calvi's murder, including Vatican officials and Mafia figures who wanted to ensure his silence.

Roberto Calvi is featured in the Italian film Il divo, a biography of former Italian Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti.