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THEIR KINGDOM COME -- INSIDE THE SECRET WORLD OF OPUS DEI |
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24. Blackfriars
CONVINCED THAT MARCINKUS WAS WITHHOLDING INFORMATION from the Italian authorities which would have absolved Roberto, the Calvi family wanted to get a message to the Pope. After Clara Calvi's meeting with Andreotti, Pazienza flew to New York to confer with Carlo Calvi. The son was in charge of a Washington affiliate, Banco Ambrosiano Service Corporation, with offices in the Watergate complex. Pazienza arranged for Carlo to meet the head of the Vatican's diplomatic mission to the UN in New York, Archbishop Giovanni Cheli. Pazienza briefed Carlo first, alleging that Cheli was after Marcinkus's job. Therefore one might have thought that Cheli had an interest in insuring the message got through. [1] Three of Pazienza's friends accompanied Carlo to his meeting: Father Lorenzo Zorza was Cheli's personal assistant; Alfonso Bove was a Brooklyn businessman; and Sebastiano Lustrisimi was a member of the Italian secret services based in New York. They waited in Cheli's front office at the UN headquarters while Carlo spoke to the Archbishop alone. Carlo thought him arrogant. After listening with evident impatience to Carlo's report on Banco Ambrosiano's dealings with the IOR, Cheli suggested that the 'proper channel' for transmitting such information to Rome would be through the apostolic delegation in Washington. He arranged a meeting for Carlo with the first secretary, Monsignor Eugenio Sbarbaro, and instructed Father Zorza to accompany him. When Carlo met Sbarbaro, he seemed even less interested than Cheli. Without the IOR's co-operation Calvi was found guilty of exchange control violations, sentenced to four years in prison and fined $13.5 million, pending appeal. 'God's Banker' -- as the world press now dubbed him - was released on bail. But he was still without a passport. Moreover, it was of little comfort that during Calvi's sojourn in prison John Paul II had appointed a commission of fifteen cardinals to review the Vatican's finances. At the next board meeting his fellow directors greeted him with standing applause. He then went to Sardinia for a few weeks of rest. A dozen years after the banker's death new elements continue to surface which contribute to the thesis that he was the victim of a conspiracy involving the Vatican bank and the Ambrosiano's hidden shareholder whose identity, for reasons that were increasingly obvious, the conspirators had wanted to protect. Among the new disclosures were the existence of a Venezuelan connection and the role played by the Italian secret services which knew what was happening step by step but never intervened. Pazienza, himself appealing a heavy prison sentence for his role in Ambrosiano's subsequent bankruptcy, admitted to feeling used by the 'occult forces' muscling in on Banco Ambrosiano behind Calvi's back. This suggestion of conspiracy was likewise ignored by the magistrates, perhaps because Pazienza was quickly phased out of the picture after introducing Calvi to the man who became the conspiracy's on-the-ground co-ordinator. This was the Sardinian property developer Flavio Mario Carboni. Clara Calvi liked this 'gentle, sweet-speaking man'. He was considerate, bringing them gifts of Sardinian goat cheese and olive oil. She did wonder, however, why he always wore loose-fitting jackets until one evening she noticed Carboni carried a revolver tucked into the small of his back. Clara quickly forgot the incident. Over the next few weeks the Calvis went for cruises on Carboni's yacht. Other guests included Nestor Coli Blasini, the Venezuelan ambassador to the Holy See, and Venezuelan economist Carlo Binetti. A COPEI (Venezuelan Christian Democrat) politician, Coil had close Opus Dei connections, though the Calvis were unaware of this. He had reformed the national business management institute, exorcizing it of all leftist influence, and was a close friend of the COPEI minister of education, Enrique Peres Olivares, a high-ranking Opus Dei numerary. He kept a close eye on the vacationers and talked at length with Calvi. Carboni was accompanied by Manuela Kleinszig, his twenty-three- year-old Austrian girlfriend. He also had a wife and Roman mistress, neither of whom travelled with him. In the midst of their holiday, Calvi flew to Rome for a meeting with Marcinkus. The night before, Carboni had come to dinner, and Calvi confided that he was having trouble with the 'priests'. At the Rome meeting Calvi wanted to convince Marcinkus to liquidate United Trading because it had got out of hand. [2] That Calvi had to seek Marcinkus's authority to implement the winding up of United Trading was strong evidence that it did not then or ever belong to Ambrosiano. But the best he could do on this occasion was to persuade Marcinkus to issue two 'comfort letters', acknowledging that the United Trading family, including the parent, were 'directly or indirectly' controlled by the IOR. One letter was addressed to Banco Ambrosiano Andino S.A. in Lima; the other to Ambrosiano Group Banco Comercial S.A. in Managua. Both were dated 1 September 1981. To obtain these letters, Calvi apparently signed a counter-letter of indemnity, prepared on blank stationery, with a Banco Ambrosiano Overseas Limited heading typed in at the top. It was dated 26 August 1981, the date of his visit to Rome. No copy of it existed in the Ambrosiano files, nor among Calvi's personal papers. It stated that Ambrosiano Overseas held the IOR harmless for issuing the letters of comfort. It also stipulated that the United Trading family would conduct no further operations and its involvement with the IOR including a $200 million term deposit -- would be unwound by no later than 30 June 1982. In spite of this letter, the United Trading shares -- the litmus test of corporate ownership -- remained with the IOR in Rome. This was in itself a most telling fact. The counter-letter's intent was to give the illusion that ultimate responsibility for the United Trading family belonged with Banco Ambrosiano Overseas in Nassau. This being the case, Calvi would have been a fool to sign it. Unless he was following orders. The Nassau bank, after all, was one-fifth owned by the IOR and the remainder by Banco Ambrosiano Holdings in Luxembourg which, as we have seen, was at one time 40-per cent owned by Lovelok, the hidden partner. So one could interpret the counter-letter as signifying that the IOR or its unnamed client -- the 'missing counterparty' -- was simply passing the United Trading position from one hand to the other. By the same measure, the IOR was better protecting itself from the risk of the United Trading network being identified with the Vatican if its existence was discovered by the Bank of Italy. Another feature of the counter-letter was its insistence on repayment by Ambrosiano Overseas of the $200 million term deposit by the end of June 1982. The IOR has never been terribly explicit about this deposit -- one theory being that it was part of a back-to-back operation between the IOR and the Ambrosiano involving a Venezuelan development project with Neapolitan investors. The IOR told Calvi that only once this deposit was retired would 'the rest' -- i.e., the monies which the United Trading then owed the Ambrosiano group -- be unwound. [3] When Calvi flew back to Sardinia the same evening he told Clara: 'The priests are going to make me pay for having brought up the name of the IOR. In fact, they are already making me pay.' [4] With United Trading's usefulness drawing to a close, Marcinkus's importance began to wane. On 29 September 1981, John Paul II promoted him Archbishop and made him Governor of the Vatican City. He still retained his position as head of the IOR, but he spent an increasing amount of time seeking to improve the administration and revenues of the Vatican City state. If Calvi's hypothesis was right, Opus Dei was about to assume control of the Vatican bank. Six weeks later John Paul II informed Cardinal Baggio that he had decided to elevate Opus Dei to the status of Personal Prelature. Among Calvi's alternatives for resolving the due-date gap, the two most realistic seemed the sale of 10 per cent of Banco Ambrosiano at an inflated price of $200 a share, or recapturing the $150 million transferred to Bellatrix at Rothschild Bank in Zurich. During the next months he worked on both, relying on Pazienza. Instead of finding a buyer for the Ambrosiano stock, Pazienza reinserted Flavio Carboni into the picture. Pazienza did this by convincing Calvi to approve a $3 million loan to Carboni's Sardinian development company, Prato Verde S.p.A., for which Pazienza received a $250,000 commission. When Calvi realized that Pazienza was not seriously interested in finding a buyer for the Ambrosiano stock he opened negotiations with Carlo De Benedetti, the man who saved Olivetti from bankruptcy. De Benedetti agreed to buy 1 million Ambrosiano shares equivalent to 2 per cent of the bank's capital -- at $43 each and join the board of directors as deputy chairman. For Calvi, this represented a beginning. It wasn't the moon, but it was nonetheless positively viewed in the marketplace. The next day Calvi travelled to Rome for an important meeting. At least that is what he told Clara. But he neglected to mention to her -- or anyone else -- with whom he was meeting. Could it have been with Opus Dei's Grand Exchequer? Clara had no way of knowing. The same day, however, La Repubblica broke the news of De Benedetti's entry into the Ambrosiano. Calvi was furious. De Benedetti's association with the Ambrosiano was supposed to have remained for the moment confidential. Calvi waited two days before informing De Benedetti that the Repubblica interview had met with a 'negative' reaction in Rome. But it is difficult to imagine why a man of De Benedetti's calibre becoming deputy chairman might have been dimly viewed. Perhaps it was because De Benedetti, indisputably an asset for the bank, was Jewish, and the people who Calvi saw in Rome did not want a Jew in a position of authority inside a Catholic bank that was handling covert financial operations for the Vatican. De Benedetti put back his shares and left. His seat on the Ambrosiano board was filled by Orazio Bagnasco, who seven months before had been proposed by Andreotti as Calvi's replacement. Bagnasco had made a fortune selling shares in property-based mutual funds, prompting Clara Calvi to call him 'the door-to-door financier.' [5] Bagnasco had with a friend purchased in the market 2 per cent of Ambrosiano's stock and demanded to be admitted to the board. The conclusion was hard to dispel that Bagnasco was the Roman party's replacement for De Benedetti. Calvi was now desperate. He thought he had found an ally in De Benedetti, only to have him replaced by a man of lesser stature whom he mistrusted. This led him to play his last remaining card, sending Pazienza to Zurich to trace the Bellatrix monies. Pazienza referred to the Bellatrix assignment as 'Operation Vino Veronese', because one of the companies through which $14 million of the missing Bellatrix money had transited, Recioto S.A., bore a name similar to an Italian wine called Richiotta, from the region of Verona. Operation Vino Veronese ran into a blank wall, or rather it ran into Jurg Heer, a man of one thousand secrets. He was Rothschild Bank's credit director. After speaking with him, Pazienza concluded that the $150 million had completely volatilized. 'I drew a big zero,' he reported. 'This guy [Heer] was real spooky.' Calvi was not impressed; Operation Vino Veronese was Pazienza's last assignment. This left the field free for Flavio Carboni, who now became Calvi's closest confidant. Earlier that month Calvi had asked Carboni to transmit a message to his contacts at the Vatican that unless the 'priests' faced up to their obligations, both Banco Ambrosiano and the IOR would go down the tubes. Carboni took this message to Cardinal Palazzini. This might have seemed strange, as Palazzini had nothing to do with finance. But Carboni knew that Palazzini was Opus Dei's staunchest supporter in the Curia and that Calvi's problems lay with Opus Dei, not Marcinkus. From the point forward, ,the Vatican and Opus Dei deny the description of events put forward by either Carboni or the Calvi family. Carboni arranged for Calvi to meet Palazzini. Afterwards, Calvi told his wife that he was accorded a secret audience with John Paul II, who asked him to help straighten out the situation at the IOR. The Pope, said Calvi, assured him that if successful the rewards would be great. [6] Heartened, Calvi began planning a restructuring of the Banco Ambrosiano group, while drafting a proposal for overhauling the IOR which he believed Opus Dei would present to the Pope. [7] Palazzini got back in touch with Carboni in March 1982 and told him that the IOR was 'impenetrable'. He suggested that Calvi see Monsignor Hilary Franco, who knew Marcinkus better since they both lived in the same Villa Stritch residence. A quick glance in the Annuario Pontificio indicated that Franco -- incardinated in the archdiocese of New York -- was a research assistant with the Congregation of the Clergy. The Annuario Pontificio did not disclose that Franco was also Palazzini's personal secretary. Like Marcinkus, Hilary Franco aspired to a grand career in the Curia. He had recently been named an Honorary Prelate of the Papal Household. Such recognition raised him to a Grade 1 Minor Official (Step 2) in the Vatican's arcane bureaucratic machinery. According to Carboni, Hilary Franco agreed to act as Calvi's intermediary with the IOR and Opus Dei. At the end of April 1982, Roberto Rosone, Ambrosiano's deputy chairman, was shot in the legs by a man riding pillion on a motor scooter. A security guard fired two shots that hit the fleeing gunman in the head. He toppled into the roadway, dead as a doornail, but the driver got away unscathed. The assassin turned out to be Danilo Abbruciati, a member of a Roman underworld association known as the Banda della Magliana. He had disappeared some months before, having decided to run the Banda della Magliana's money laundering operations from London. But why was Rosone on an underworld hit list? Pazienza claimed a police report alleged that Rosone was laundering money for the underworld. This was never substantiated and Rosone strongly denied it. Within days, however, it was rumoured that Calvi had put out the contract on Rosone's life because he believed his deputy chairman was plotting behind his back. But Calvi was terribly shocked by the attack which he took as a warning for himself. It left him brooding and sleepless. Two weeks later, Calvi wrote to Hilary Franco, requesting an urgent meeting to discuss ways of raising $250 to $300 miIlion for the Ambrosiano. In this letter the chairman of a $20,000 million bank literally grovelled before the Grade 1 Minor Official (Step 2) of the Vatican, and he would only have done so if he believed there was some overriding reason, such as Franco's proximity to Opus Dei and to the Pope. The wildest stories circulated about this prelate. Clara Calvi was told that he was the Pope's confessor. [8] Carboni's assistant, Emilio Pellicani, thought Franco had an office at the Opus Dei headquarters. Carboni claimed that Franco had excellent White House contacts. [9] He also maintained good relations with South Africa and its client state, the black homeland of Bophuthatswana, where he was said to be interested in investing Vatican funds in a gambling casino and race track. Franco's other South African interest was reported to be Cape Town's President Hotel, at which was held the annual Miss Seapoint beauty contest. [10] Franco informed Carboni that Opus Dei was willing to front a loan for the Ambrosiano group so that it could repay the $200 million to the IOR on deadline. 'Monsignor Franco knows everything; he knows that I asked him whether Calvi could obtain from Opus Dei a $200-million loan ... and he assured me that these matters would be resolved, and that in a month or a month and a half everything would be all right,' Carboni told the Milan magistrates two years later. [11] In spite of Calvi's grovelling, the tone of the 12 May 1982 letter to Franco, thanking him for his 'valued intervention with the Vatican authorities', was relatively up-beat because the banker at last believed a solution was in sight. He told Clara and his daughter that Opus Dei had presented to the Pope a new plan whose centrepiece was Opus Dei's assuming control of the IOR, and that if accepted it would create 'a completely new balance of power within the Vatican.' [12] After talking with the Calvi family I am convinced that the banker sincerely believed he was dealing with representatives of Opus Dei. Of course it is possible that he was being purposely misled. But his trips to Madrid and his restructuring plan for Ambrosiano which involved Carlo Pesenti, an Ambrosiano board member known to be close to the Vatican and also to members of Opus Dei, were not figments of Calvi's imagination. They really existed. Moreover he was led to think that if he resigned from the Ambrosiano he would be named a financial adviser to the Vatican. But Calvi's optimism was short-lived. On his next visit to the IOR on Thursday, 20 May 1982, Marcinkus refused to see him. Instead, Calvi met his assistant, Dr. Luigi Mennini. The encounter was glacial. Marcinkus wanted Calvi to appear before the commission of cardinals that was looking into the Vatican's finances. The commission, according to a Calvi memorandum later recovered from his briefcase, wanted to know why the Milan banker had used United Trading monies without prior approval to support the Ambrosiano stock. [13] That the cardinals were aware of United Trading's existence is of itself revelatory. In any event, Calvi suspected that Marcinkus was preparing a criminal complaint against him just as his appeal of the currency violations conviction was due to be heard. This caused Calvi to lose his cool. He shouted at Mennini, 'Be careful! If it comes out that you gave money to Solidarnosc, there won't be one stone of the Vatican left standing on another.' The details of this meeting, denied by the Vatican, came to light because Carboni secretly recorded his conversations with Calvi who told him about it when they met at Drezzo that weekend. Calvi by then had sent Clara to Washington to be with their son Carlo as he claimed her life was in danger in Milan. Anna had refused to accompany her mother because she was about to sit for her final exams at the University of Milan. At the end of May, Calvi wrote to Cardinal Palazzini, pleading with him 'to intervene once again with those who, like yourself, have the best interests of the Church at heart.' After claiming to possess evidence that Casaroli and Silvestrini had taken bribes from Sindona, he asked Palazzini to arrange another audience with the Pope, so that he could explain the problem 'in its entirety, above all to prevent the projects of the enemies of the Church ... from succeeding'. On the first weekend of June, Calvi returned with Anna to Drezzo. Having heard nothing from either Palazzini or Hilary Franco, he drafted a last letter to the Pope in which he accused the IOR bankers of negligence and misdealing. In part the letter stated:
Before closing, Calvi said he wanted to turn over to the Pope 'a number of important documents that are in my possession, and to explain to you in plain language how these dealings, about which you certainly are not informed, happened and could happen again'. By this time Licio Gelli had returned clandestinely to Europe. He was sighted at the beginning of May by an Italian secret service agent dining in a Geneva restaurant with Hans Albert Kunz, a business associate of Carboni. Soon after, the still powerful Venerable Master of the dismantled P2 Lodge contacted Calvi to demand money. The pressure never stopped. Seeing her father distraught, Anna asked him to explain what was really happening. Calvi told her that to deal with the IOR problems 'we have drafted and put forward a plan which provides for the direct intervention of Opus Dei,' and that Opus Dei 'was due to supply an enormous sum ... to cover the IOR's open position at Banco Ambrosiano.' As Ambrosiano's restructuring plan progressed, Calvi had told his wife, 'If Andreotti does not throw a spoke in the wheels in the next couple of weeks, all will be well.' Two days later, he again told Clara: 'What Andreotti had to say to me today gave me no pleasure at all.' Then he claimed that Andreotti was threatening to kill him. 'We lived in a perpetual climate of terror and subject to constant presages of death,' she said. One of his last comments was, 'If they kill me, the Pope will have to resign.' [14] On 7 June 1982, Calvi informed the Banco Ambrosiano board for the first time that $1,300 million was at risk in his dealings with the IOR. The next day Calvi removed from the bank two cartons of documents which he regarded as essential in proving that he had been misled by the 'priests' sending them to an unknown destination, possibly Drezzo. Calvi flew to Rome on Wednesday evening, 9 June 1982. His chauffeur in Rome, Tito Tesauri, picked him up at the airport and noted that his black briefcase, bulging with documents, was heavier than usual. Calvi spent the night at his flat in the old part of the city. Next morning over the phone he told Mennini that he declined to meet the commission of cardinals because the documents he needed to explain his dealings with the IOR were stored abroad and without a passport he was unable to retrieve them. He nevertheless agreed to meet Mennini on the following morning. Sometime during his Thursday round of meetings, Calvi was shown a copy of a forged warrant for his arrest. The idea for the false warrant, according to a Guardia di Finanza undercover agent, came from Licio Gelli. The agent, codenamed 'Podgora', claimed that Gelli was waiting in London under an assumed name. Italian magistrates, as Calvi had already learned, have sweeping powers of detention. Believing the warrant to be authentic, he had every reason to be concerned. He disappeared that night. According to Carboni, Calvi moved to the apartment of Emilio Pellicani in Rome's Magliana suburb. Pellicani was Carboni's batman. Tito Tesauri went to pick up Calvi early next morning Friday, 11 June 1982 -- and drive him to his meeting at the IOR. The chauffeur found Calvi's flat empty, the bed ruffled but unslept in, and a note in the kitchen written by his boss in a trembling hand: 'I have returned earlier than expected.' [15] At 1.30 p.m., Calvi called Mennini to apologize for missing that morning's appointment, but promised to meet him the following week. Then, accompanied by Pellicani, Calvi supposedly took an Alitalia flight from Rome to Venice, and was driven by Pellicani from Venice to Trieste, where he was entrusted to Silvano Vittor, a petty smuggler whose mistress, Michaela, was Manuela Kleinszig's twin sister. Vittor would arrange for Calvi's clandestine passage into Austria during the night. But the only problem with this version of events is that Tina Anselmi, head of the P2 parliamentary commission, as well as several other persons well known to Calvi, were on the same flight and none noted the banker's presence aboard the aircraft. So it is possible that he arrived in Trieste by other means. In fact the mayor of Drezzo, Leandro Balzaretti, claimed that Calvi and Carboni arrived in Drezzo by car late Thursday night. Balzaretti, an insurance agent, knew Calvi well. The Calvi family originally came from nearby Como, and the two spoke the Como dialect together. Had Calvi returned to Drezzo to pick up the two cartons of documents deposited there earlier in the week? 'Calvi called me from his house and said he wanted to pass by the office at midday to discuss insurance for a small bank he had bought in the south. He said he was leaving afterwards for Rome and would not be back in Drezzo until the twenty-sixth. I waited, but at noon he called on the car telephone to say he couldn't make it. I never heard from him again,' Balzaretti said when we met at his home in Drezzo. [16] Como is 530 kilometres from Trieste. Travelling by car, the journey could easily be made in six hours. Calvi and Pellicani arrived at the Hotel Excelsior in Trieste in the early evening. Calvi was alleged to have only his bulging briefcase with him. But if he had come from Drezzo he almost certainly had the two cartons of documents as well. Calvi initially had planned to go to Zurich, where Anna was waiting for him, as he wanted to make inquiries about the missing $150 million at the Rothschild Bank. But the conspirators did not want Calvi in Zurich. They wanted him in London. Calvi's hilltop property at Drezzo was within 50 metres of the Swiss frontier and after picking up documents and money, he could have walked out of the front gate, crossed a dirt track and made his way down the wooded north slope of the hill to the Swiss village of Pedrinate, on the outskirts of Chiasso. Or indeed he could have gone by road because the customs post on the Italian side of the border at Pedrinate was unguarded and to cross into Switzerland all he needed, as an Italian citizen, was an 10 card which he carried with him. But Carboni evidently convinced him to drive with Pellicani to Trieste while Carboni went back to Rome aboard his private Cessna. By the time they arrived at their respective destinations the cat was out of the bag. Rome's chief prosecutor, Dr Domenico Sica, had been informed that the banker was missing. Sica immediately raised the alarm. Vittor arranged for a Yugoslav associate to drive Calvi during the night to the home of the Kleinszig sisters at Klagenfurt, Austria. Vittor explained that he would use another route to smuggle Calvi's briefcase and, one assumes, the two boxes of documents over the border, joining up with the banker in Klagenfurt to await Carboni's arrival. Calvi spent the day in Klagenfurt nervously waiting for the Triestine smuggler to arrive with his bulging briefcase and boxes of documents. Vittor only appeared around midnight with the briefcase, but the two boxes of documents are never again mentioned. The delay in Vittor's arrival meant that he had unrestricted possession of the briefcase and perhaps the boxes for twenty-four hours, giving him ample time to photocopy the contents. One can only surmise that, among other items, the briefcase and boxes contained the missing accounting for United Trading, perhaps also the books of the defunct Lovelok and Radowal, and the Vagnozzi file on Marcinkus. The accounting items would certainly have provided evidence as to the real ownership of the Lovelok-Radowal-United Trading complex and therefore might have vindicated Calvi in the event of litigation. Calvi remained intent on meeting Anna in Zurich. After Carboni arrived with Calvi's two suitcases -- packed in Drezzo the previous weekend and handed to Carboni in Milan before Calvi left for Rome -- it was decided that Vittor would drive him to Bregenz, on the Austrian border with Switzerland, while Carboni, Manuela and her sister Michaela flew to Zurich to judge whether a Swiss border crossing on a forged passport that Carboni had procured for him might be attempted. In fact Carboni met in Zurich with two other conspirators, Swiss businessman Hans Kunz and Roman restaurateur Ernesto Diotallevi, an associate of the late Danilo Abbruciati. Six weeks previously, Carboni had paid Diotallevi, a member of the Banda della Magliana, $530,000 for purposes unknown and in Zurich he promised to pay Diotallevi's mother-in-law a further large sum. From Zurich, Carboni phoned Pellicani in Rome and asked him to check flight schedules from London to Caracas. He and Kunz then drove to Bregenz, arriving about 9 p.m., where they had a long meeting with Calvi. Only their version of what transpired exists, but it was clearly more tense than either Carboni or Kunz were prepared to admit. Carboni pressured Calvi to come up with $200 million so that the money could be transferred to Caracas before the end of the month. According to Carboni, during the meeting Calvi told them he had been asked 'on behalf of Opus Dei and other religious orders in South America to form by September 1982 a banking institution to finance trade between Latin America and eastern bloc countries'. [17] Caracas was foreseen as the bank's headquarters. Carboni then claimed that Calvi put forward a plan for raising $350 million within the next few days. Calvi said he had $150 million in a strongbox at the Banque Lambert in Geneva, another $50 million at a bank in the United States, and he believed he could obtain $150 million from a contact in London. Carboni added that after raising the necessary cash Calvi proposed to fly to Caracas. Had Carboni let slip something that he should never have mentioned? To cover up this gaff, Carboni claimed that he and Venezuelan economist Carlo Binetti were planning to go to Caracas and Calvi, with nothing better to do, proposed to join them there. In any event, this was the first mention of a Caracas connection and suddenly it loomed large in Calvi's plans for the few days that remained to him. Carboni proposed that Calvi fly directly to London on a private charter (private flights are subject to less stringent immigration controls) while he went to Geneva to recover the $150 million from the Banque Lambert strongbox. He knew by then that Calvi had several bunches of strongbox keys in his briefcase and supposed one was for 'San Patricio's well', as he now called the Lambert cache. He also proposed that Kunz fly to the US and pick up the $50 million. [18] This would leave Calvi free to deal with his London contact. Calvi must have realized by then with whom he was dealing. Apparently he had no intention of turning over the Banque Lambert strongbox key to Carboni, believing perhaps that it was the last insurance policy he possessed. He claimed instead that his wife's power-of-attorney was needed to gain access to the strongbox. Carboni was not pleased. He had an apparent fixation on a sum of $200 million and, it seems, an urgent need to be in Caracas before the end of the month. Calvi assured Carboni he could handle everything from London. He may have mentioned that Baron Lambert, owner of the Banque Lambert, had a top-drawer solicitor who could manage to have the contents of the Geneva strongbox delivered to London. He asked that Kunz arrange for the rental in London of a luxury town house or apartment so that he could discreetly meet his third source of funds, the supposed high-level contact. Carboni and Kunz returned to Zurich. Next morning Kunz arranged for a taxi jet to pick up two 'directors of Fiat' at Innsbruck airport and fly them to Gatwick. In the confusion at Gatwick, they missed the driver of a hired car sent to collect them and took a taxi to Chelsea Cloisters, a residential hotel in Sloane Avenue, where Kunz's London solicitor had made a reservation under the name of 'Vittor plus one'. Calvi was not pleased with the eighth-floor convenience flat that he was required to share with his minder, and complained bitterly. But the banker was no longer the master of his movements. Vittor told him nothing could be done until Carboni arrived in London the following afternoon. Next morning, Calvi contacted Alberto Jaimes Berti, Cardinal Siri's friend. Since May 1980 Berti had lived mainly in London where he owned an apartment in Hans Place, behind Harrods. Calvi had first met the Caracas lawyer in 1975 or 1976 at a reception at the Grand Hotel in Rome for the Venezuelan president, Carlos Andres Perez. Berti agreed to see Calvi at the beginning of the afternoon, and when he arrived at the Chelsea Cloisters, Calvi was waiting for him in the lobby, dressed in a dark suit and tie, his moustache well trimmed. They sat down in one corner and Calvi removed from his briefcase a notebook which he consulted once at the beginning of their half-hour discussion. Calvi apparently knew that Berti was the custodian of a sealed envelope containing the shares of a Panamanian company that held $2,200 million belonging to as many as ,ix principals who he suspected included the IOR, the Spanish branch of Opus Dei, Ruiz-Mateos's Rumasa, Banco Ambrosiano and, perhaps, the Camorra. When last in Rome, Berti had spoken to Donato De Bonis, the IOR's priest secretary, who advised him that he could openly discuss the matter with Calvi, reinforcing his impression that the IOR and Ambrosiano were no strangers to the transaction. At one point Berti surmised that the money was intended to capitalize the Latin American trade bank that both he and Calvi had been told about, though by different sources. In the interim, the money was invested in blue chip bonds in New York. Calvi asked if the portfolio could be used to guarantee a loan. Berti thought this possible, but for technical reasons it would require several days to arrange. Calvi seemed relieved and observed, 'So the matter is resolved'. He told Berti he would be back in touch. While waiting for Carboni to arrive, Calvi telephoned Clara. She said he sounded elated. 'Something mad is about to happen. It's marvellous. It could change our lives,' he told her. He also asked Vittor to get him a British Airways flight schedule. Accompanied by the Kleinszig sisters, Carboni booked into the Park Lane Hilton that same afternoon and called Calvi shortly after 6.15 p.m. They met at about 8 p.m. and spent the next two hours walking in Hyde Park. Again, only Carboni's version exists of what transpired, but Calvi returned to the Chelsea Cloisters a shaken man. At 7.30 a.m. next morning he called Anna in Zurich. He said she was no longer safe in Zurich and must leave immediately for Washington. Anna later testified that her father sounded very nervous 'and he said terrible things would happen if I didn't leave'. Carboni did not attempt to contact Calvi at all on the following day -- Thursday -- until late in the evening -- around 11 p.m. He claimed that Calvi refused to see him. Instead Vittor came down to the lobby and together they went for a drink to a nearby pub, The Queen's Arms, where the Kleinszig sisters were waiting. When Vittor returned to the Chelsea Cloisters at about 1 a.m. he had no key and had to be let into flat 881 by the night manager. The TV set was on, but there was no Calvi. Undisturbed, Calvi's supposed bodyguard turned in for the night. By the sworn affidavit of another eighth-floor resident, who was only questioned about these events seven years later, it was clear that both Vittor and Carboni were lying. Cecil Coomber, a South African artist then in his early seventies, was a resident in flat 834, down the corridor from the one occupied by Calvi and Vittor. At about 10 p.m. that evening, Coomber and a companion decided to go out for dinner. Waiting at the lift were three men. The two younger ones spoke in Italian, while the third -- whom Coomber identified as Calvi -- looked apprehensive and remained silent. All five took the lift to the ground floor. As Coomber crossed the lobby to the front entrance, he saw the three turn towards a service entrance at the rear of the building, where another resident had noticed a black car with driver parked. Coomber's sideways glance made him: the last person to see Roberto Calvi alive. The banker carried no briefcase; he was wearing a necktie, and he still had a moustache. Calvi's body was found hanging from scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge early next morning. He was wearing a two-piece light grey suit but no necktie. And no moustache. Only his feet were in the water. The River Police were called and removed the body, conveying it by launch to the Waterloo Police Pier. The policemen found four large stones in the victim's pockets and a brick inserted so roughly inside the six-button trouser fly that it had ripped off a button. The autopsy performed that afternoon found the victim had died about 2 a.m. of asphyxia due to hanging. No body injuries were noted. The corpse carried a forged Italian passport in the name of Gian Roberto Calvini, a wallet with £7,000 in various currencies, two watches, four pairs of spectacles, but no keys. In one pocket was a slip of paper with the handwritten address of the Chelsea Cloisters, the business card of Colin McFadyean and a page torn from an address book on which appeared the telephone numbers of Monsignor Hilary Franco. Detective Inspector John White of the City of London Police was called to the Snow Hill Police Station around 7 p.m. that evening: A telex had come in from Interpol announcing the arrival in London of Rome prosecutor Domenico Sica, accompanied by three Italian police officers. As the reserve inspector on duty that night, White was delegated to meet the Italians at Heathrow at 3.30 a.m. and he drove them directly to the morgue. Dr Sica identified the body as Calvi. The Italian magistrate needed no convincing that he was dealing with a homicide. Immediately back in Rome, he issued an international warrant for the missing Carboni. Unknown to White, Calvi's travelling companions had already skipped the country or were preparing to do so. Acting on the scrap of paper found in Calvi's pocket he went to the Chelsea Cloisters on the Saturday morning to inquire if Calvi had been registered there. He drew a blank. Because Calvi's death was regarded as a suicide, no scientific examination was made of the scaffolding under Blackfriars Bridge. Clara Calvi learned of her husband's death on the Friday morning. Her brother, Luciano Canetti, called after hearing a newsflash on Italian radio that the missing banker had been found dead in London. The shock was devastating. She collapsed. A doctor was called. The family did not know what would happen next. 'After the sharp, wounding pain of the first days when we sought refuge in the Watergate under the protection of armed guards, our spirit remained strong. We were guided by a constant faith in him and a determination to use the judicial systems as diverse as Italy and England to uncover the truth. It was our duty, no matter the cost or risk, because we knew that suicide was out of the question,' Carlo Calvi later explained. _______________ Notes: 1. Giovanni Cheli was one of 26 persons to testify at Escriva de Balaguer's beatification hearings in Rome. He therefore knew the Founder extremely well and worked closely with the Prelature. After leaving his post at the United Nations, he became one of the powerhouses in the Roman Curia, serving as co-president of the council of advisers to the papal household and president of the pontifical council dealing with migrations, was a member of the 'Cor Unum' and inter-religious affairs pontifical councils and the pontifical commission for Latin America. 2. Carboni statement to Examining Magistrate Matteo Mazziotti and Prosecutor Renata Bricchetti at Parma Court House, 15 February 1984, p. 3. 3. Flavio Carboni deposition before Mazziotti and Bricchetti. Parma, 16 February 1984 (p. 14 of English translation). 4. Clara Calvi diaries, p. 61. 5. Ibid., p. 46. 6. Ibid., p. 69. 7. Clara Calvi deposition before Examining Magistrate Bruno Sidari and Public Prosecutor Pierluigi Dell'Ossa, 24 October 1982, p. 86. 8. Clara Calvi diaries, p. 69. 9. Pellicani testimony before the Chamber of Deputies P2 Commission, 24 February 1983. Vol. ClV, Doc. XXIII, No. 2, Ter 9, pp. 344-345 and 643. 10. 'Sierra Leone/South Africa: The Strange Story of LIAT', Africa Confidential, London, 24J une 1987, Vol. 28, No. 13. 11. Statement of Flavio Carboni to Examining Magistrate Mazziotti and Prosecutor Bricchetti, Parma Court House, 16 February 1984 (p. 14 of English translation). 12. Testimony of Anna Calvi to the Milan Magistrate Bruno Siclari and Prosecutor Pierluigi Dell'Ossa, 22-23 October 1982, EM3 f4, pp. 265 ss. 13. The undated, unheaded document refers to 'these companies' and the reproach was made by Marcinkus before the Commission of Cardinals. 'These companies' can only refer to the United Trading complex. [Source: Tribunale di Roma, Sentenza nella causa di primo grade n. 168/92 contro Carboni e altri, 23 March 1993, pp. 102-104.] 14. Testimony of Clara Calvi, 19-26 October 1982. p. 88. 15. Statement of Tiro Tesauri to the Direzione Centrale della Polizia Criminale. Rome, 3 December 1991. 16. Interview with Leandro Balzaretti, 10 February 1994. 17. Carboni deposition taken by Milan Examining Magistrate Mazziotti and Prosecutor Dell'Ossa at Parma Prison on 7 April 1984. 18. Details of this plan and Calvi's intended travel to Caracas are given by Carboni in his deposition taken by Mazziotti and Dell'Ossa at Parma Prison on 7 April 1984, on pp. 12 and 16 of the English translation.
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