A son's quest for truth

There is an unexpected softness in Carlo Calvi's voice when he speaks of the men who murdered his father. He describes with impressive calm how they strangled him, stuffed bricks into his pockets and hung his body from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge. He reels off dates, places and incidents filled with the names of Mafia assassins and internationally known politicians.

The tone is level, controlled. He has spent 21 years and millions of pounds on a personal crusade to get to the bottom of his father's death and he is not about to give in to anger now.

But this is an emotional time. Police in London have re-opened their investigation into the Calvi affair and his son believes now, at last, the truth will be told.

The death of Roberto Calvi prompted one of the most baffling - and potentially explosive - mysteries of the age. He earned the sobriquet God's Banker through his financial dealings for the Vatican and he had a close relationship with trusted lieutenants of the Pope. But, while he lunched with cardinals, he also supped with the Devil.

He was linked to a clandestine freemasons-style group known as P2, which has been condemned in Italy as a corrupt "state within a state", a club of politicians, criminals and powerful business figures united in their hunger for wealth and power.

An inquest soon after his death in June 1982 found Roberto Calvi had committed suicide but this verdict was swiftly discredited. A second inquest recorded an open verdict. Carlo Calvi says he never doubted his father was murdered.

Four men, one of them a convicted Mafia paymaster, have now been named as suspects in the killing and they are expected to face a preliminary court hearing soon in Rome. Carlo Calvi is planning to fly to London to meet the officer appointed to handle the case here, Detective Chief Superintendent Trevor Smith.

It could be a profitable encounter for Mr Smith. Mr Calvi's own inquiries have found answers to many of the questions that, so far, have eluded official investigators.

From his home in Montreal, Canada - where the basement houses 60 boxes of documents on the affair, all meticulously filed - Mr Calvi revealed that private detectives and experts hired by his family have built a compelling case in which Italy's political establishment, the Vatican and the underworld have significant roles.

The motive, he maintains, was to stop his father revealing secrets that would shock the world. As Carlo Calvi disclosed to me the findings of his long and arduous investigation, he said: "Individuals involved in the murder are still around. My expectations have always been limited and I don't think I'll walk out of a court and say 'justice has been done'. But it should be possible to identify the guilty."

Roberto Calvi was a frightened man when he fled Italy in the summer of 1982. He was 62 years old, the bank of which he was chief executive, Banco Ambrosiano, was on the verge of collapse with £800 million in debts, and he was due to defend himself at an appeal hearing on alleged currency violations.

He knew his life was in danger and he changed his identity, acquired a false passport and fled to London, putting his trust in a long-term associate, Sardinian business tycoon Flavio Carboni.

Mr Carboni is one of the four people officially named as suspects in Calvi's murder. "My father was lured to London to be murdered," Carlo Calvi said. "The assassins were there, waiting for him."

Mr Calvi's investigation indicates that his father was strangled, before his body was weighted and suspended underneath Blackfriars Bridge, probably by people who were in a small boat. The choice of bridge may have been significant: the P2 members referred to themselves as "frati neri" - black friars.

In a move to allay possible concern over their new investigation, City of London police have stated that neither Chief Superintendent Smith, nor any of the other senior officers involved, have masonic links.

Mr Carboni, a wealthy and influential business figure in Italy, has been questioned a number of times about Roberto Calvi's death. He has vehemently denied any involvement and recently took legal action against the makers of a feature film on which Carlo Calvi acted as consultant.

The film, God's Bankers, was made by the respected Italian director Giuseppe Ferrara and it portrays Mr Carboni as the organiser of Mr Calvi's murder. Days after it opened in Italian cinemas it was taken off, after Mr Carboni started legal action for slander.

"I won that court case but the film has been blocked," Mr Ferrara said. "Strong political pressure has been put on me and my movie. No one will screen it. You can find it on video and the television rights have been bought but its future is uncertain."

That may change if the the prosecutor's legal moves in Rome result in convictions. Apart from Mr Carboni, three others have been named as suspects: Manuela Kleinszig, Carboni's Austrian mistress; Ernesto Diotavelli, a Rome businessman; and Giuseppe "Pippo" Calo, a high-ranking Mafia paymaster currently serving a long prison term.

According to a Mafia supergrass, Calo engaged an assassin called Francesco di Carlo to carry out the murder. Di Carlo - known among his peers as Frankie the Strangler - was a well-known Mafia figure in London in the early Eighties.

But the allegation against Di Carlo may well be an attempt to divert attention away from the true culprits. Mr Calvi is convinced the murder was committed by members of a gang called La Banda della Magliana, an organisation with a history of carrying out politically motivated crimes and proven connections to P2.

"A number of individuals from this gang were in London at the time," he said. "They were mixed in with Mafiosi, people from the Camorra - it was a whole stratum of the Italian underworld based in London."

His evidence for this comes from painstaking inquiries undertaken by Kroll Associates, the international detective agency. Mr Calvi, his mother Clara and sister Anna, decided after his father's death that they would do all they could to get at the truth.

Roberto Calvi built up considerable assets during what had been a successful banking career. But his son said that when a $5million life insurance policy was paid out, half of it went to creditors. "We have spent about $4million (£2.5 million) on private detectives and another $20 million (£12.5 million) on lawyers, professional experts and representation in numerous legal hearings. The family had resources but I have to say they have been considerably reduced."

In 1996, they settled all outstanding claims against his father's interests. After the murder, Carlo Calvi abandoned his own career in banking to manage the complex legal and accountancy affairs and his own investigation which, in conversation, he calls "our matter".

So far, Mr Calvi, married with two children, has devoted most of his adult life to it. "My father was part of me and my mother - the family," he said. "We owe it to him not to rest until this is finally finished."

He hopes the new investigation will precisely identify those responsible for carrying out the murder.

New forensic techniques, not available in the Eighties, will be employed, he said, and he will be arranging for the scaffolding on which his father was found to be made available to the police. It is now in the care of an expert retained by his family, he said.

Identifying the murderers would not, of itself, solve one of the most puzzling aspects of the case - the motive for the killing. Nor would it necessarily pinpoint the people who ordered it to be carried out.

Intriguingly, Mr Calvi says he already knows most of the names and why the killing was ordered. If his father had returned to Italy to face the appeal hearing on currency charges, he would have been forced to speak out to defend himself, Mr Calvi said.

"He would have revealed the details of a scandal that involved the Vatican and the highest level of government," he said. "He was murdered to guarantee his silence. It has been suggested that he was killed by the Mafia because he had lost money that the bank had been given for laundering. That has been advanced as a convenient theory. Yes, there was Mafia money, but that was incidental to what happened."

Mr Calvi said his father had been moving money for the Vatican's own bank, the Institute for Religious Works, into companies set up across the world. The diversion of funds, he said, was to allow the Vatican to pursue political aims in countries where the Catholic Church had an interest.

"They were paying off politicians in places like Argentina, Peru," he said. "It was something the Vatican did not want revealed." He believes the crucial decisions were made by members of P2, in which his father had been involved.

"In this group we see the overlapping of politicians, big business, the Vatican and the Mafia," he said. "It was supposed to have been disbanded but many of the people concerned are there to this day. Some of the men responsible for my father's death have died. But others are still around, some are still powerful."

Shortly before his death Roberto Calvi pleaded with contacts inside the Vatican for help. He wrote two letters to the Pope. Whatever decisions were made behind the walls of Vatican City have not been revealed, so far.

But Carlo Calvi has a considerable amount of hard evidence, he says - among it, alleged proof linking one of the named murder suspects to a high-ranking Italian statesman.

At the time of Roberto Calvi's murder, the suspect made a number of phone calls from his London hotel to Italy. The number he dialled implicates the statesman, an internationally known figure.

"That man," Mr Calvi said, naming a politician the Evening Standard cannot identify for legal reasons, "is the one who ordered my father's death." The public exposure of this individual, the naming of the assassins and all those who took part in the crime, have always been the Calvi family's aims.

Roberto Calvi's widow, now 81, lives in a nursing home in Montreal. His daughter, Carlo's sister, lives in Europe. They have never considered abandoning what they believe is a struggle for justice. "It has been long and hard and costly," Mr Calvi said. "But now I really believe the end may be in sight."