Judges say hanging of banker Calvi was murder

Roberto Calvi, the man known as "God's banker" who was found hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge 20 years ago, was murdered, a panel of judges in Rome is expected to announce shortly.

Three suspects in Calvi's killing in June 1982, one of whom is already in prison for an unrelated offence, may then be tried for the crime.

The decision by the judicial investigation in Rome was leaked by the Corriere della Sera newspaper yesterday. It follows the report of a panel of forensic scientists, who carried out a new autopsy last September and concluded that Calvi was already dead when he was hanged by twine from scaffolding under the bridge. They believed that he could have been strangled.

Scientists working for three investigating judges in Rome have affirmed that view, it is claimed. The new investigation became possible when parts of Calvi's corpse and of clothes he was wearing turned up in a cupboard in Milan's Institute of Legal Medicine when the institute was moving. The parts, which were analysed by the original English coroner in 1982, include bits of Calvi's intestine, tongue and neck, and pieces of fabric.

A source in the new investigation told Corriere della Sera that modern forensic techniques had enabled the scientists to reach the conclusion that Calvi was murdered.

His alleged killers include Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian businessman with connections to the Mafia, and Pippo Calo, formerly a Mafia financial director and now serving time for an unrelated offence. If they were brought to trial, it would be a major development in a case that has baffled investigators for two decades.

Roberto Calvi was the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, a private bank, when he fled Italy under a false name and went to ground in a hotel in Chelsea, London, in 1982. He had good reason to run away. In the 1970s and 1980s he had built up a secretive financial empire, linking the Vatican's bank, the Istituto per le Opere di Religione; P2, the secret, far right-wing Masonic lodge that had many top Italian politicians among its members; and the Mafia.

Their shared interest was in maximising their investments while avoiding scrutiny, and that was what Calvi, through a network of offshore companies, helped them to do.

But with the collapse in 1974 of a bank run by a powerful friend of his, Calvi's elaborate construction began to totter. In 1978 he was investigated for tax evasion and the illegal export of currency, and in 1981 found guilty of currency violations and sentenced to four years in prison. Though freed pending appeal, he was said to have been traumatised by his brief time behind bars.

When he fled Rome in 1982 with the help of Mafia associates, he was a ruined man: Banco Ambrosiano had collapsed with hundreds of millions of dollars of debt, and many of his powerful friends were now enemies.

But although the first coroner's report returned a verdict of suicide, later reports – including one that involved exhuming Calvi's remains – have been ambiguous. After 20 years of speculation, the final act may be about to begin.