BBC World
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_236000/236064.stm

'God's Banker' exhumed

Wednesday, December 16, 1998

The coffin was removed and taken to Milan for tests

BBC Rome Correspondent Orla Guerin: It is still unclear what happened and how many people were involved

The remains of a prominent Italian banker, Roberto Calvi, who was at the centre of a huge financial scandal, have been exhumed at a cemetery near Milan.

Police, magistrates and Calvi family members watched as the brown casket containing his remains was placed in a hearse in the town of Drezzo, and then taken to Milan for tests.

Mr Calvi's body was found under Blackfriars bridge (background)

Pathologists want to establish the cause of death of Mr Calvi, who was found hanging under London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982 with his pockets full of bricks.

A British coroners court then ruled that Mr Calvi's death was suicide.

Conspiracy theory

Members of Mr Calvi's family have long insisted that he was murdered. They suspect Mafia involvement in his death. The exhumation, however, was ordered only last year, when four men were charged with conspiracy to murder Mr Calvi.

One of them is allegedly a Sicilian mafia boss, while another, a Mafia informer, has testified that the banker was killed because of fears he would tell the authorities about his money laundering schemes.

Roberto Calvi: His death still a mystery

Mr Calvi's body had already been exhumed from the same tomb in 1993 for tests on his clothing, but then no new autopsy was held.

"Laser tests on his clothing revealed stains that hadn't shown up before," Mr Calvi's son, Carlo, a Montreal-based businessman, said.

"So I believe on this basis we could find some new evidence," he said.

Pathologists will now examine Mr Calvi's remains to try to establish if Calvi committed suicide, or his death was indeed murder. He might have been strangled or perhaps poisoned in his luxury London flat.

Links with Mafia and Vatican

Mr Calvi was chairman of Italy's largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano, and had close links to organised crime. Ironically, during the same period, Calvi's close ties to the Vatican's own bank, the Institute for Religious Affairs, earned him the nickname "God's banker."

When Banco Ambrosiano collapsed, the Vatican bank had to help pay compensation to creditors.