Anniversary of the London murder of Italian Banker Robert Calvi

Today, June 18, is the anniversary of Robert Calvi’s murder in London.

Those who have started GOD’S BANKERS are well aware that the grisly morning discovery, 34 years ago today, of an Italian banker hanging from London’s Blackfriars Bridge, is the start of the tale down the rabbit hole into the world of Vatican finances. Calvi was one of Italy’s top bankers, a friend of the Pope, and one of the Vatican Bank’s key business partners. He was also the mastermind of a byzantine offshore Ponzi-styled banking empire that finally collapsed, earning him a criminal fraud conviction and nearly bringing the Vatican Bank under.

A few days after he fled Italy, with a false passport on a private jet, he ended up swinging from Blackfriars. Ruled a suicide by Scotland Yard, it took 25 years before investigators reversed themselves and classified it as murder. In 2010, 5 men - including top mobsters and a former grand master of secret Masonic Lodge of which Calvi was a member - were tried and acquitted.

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