Italians acquitted for 1982 "God's banker" murder

ROME, June 6 (Reuters) Two Italian mobsters, a bodyguard, a financier and his girlfriend were acquitted today of the 1982 murder of Roberto Calvi, known as ''God's banker'' for his Vatican links, who was found hanging from a London bridge.

The head of the collapsed Banco Ambrosiano was found weighed down with bricks, with 15,000 dollars in his pockets, dangling from a noose under Blackfriars Bridge in central London. First ruled a suicide, the case was reopened in 2003 as a murder inquiry.

The prosecution wanted life sentences for four of those charged, but a Rome court said there was insufficient evidence.

The prosecution portrayed it as a Mafia revenge killing for Calvi's theft of Cosa Nostra money he was meant to launder, as well as money stolen from Licio Gelli of the P2 Masonic lodge.

It presented forensic evidence that he was strangled and his suicide staged in a manner suggesting Mafia or Masonic ritual.

An investigator hired by Calvi's son Carlo, who has never believed it was suicide, was disappointed but not surprised.

''These were people who didn't put the rope around his neck or order it, they were just facilitators so it doesn't surprise me altogether that they weren't found guilty,'' said Jeff Katz, head of London corporate investigators Bishop International.

''It's a big disappointment for the family and will be for the magistrates too,'' he told Reuters by phone from London.

The court acquitted Mafia ''treasurer'' Pippo Calo, serving life for another murder; Sardinian financier Flavio Carboni; Rome crime boss Ernesto Diotallevi; and Calvi's bodyguard Silvano Vittor.

Carboni's Austrian girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig was cleared of all suspicion, as the prosecution had requested.

NO RUST ON HIS SHOES Despite a quarter of a century's wait, many questions have never been answered about Calvi, who has even been linked by authors to the untimely death of Pope John Paul I in 1978.

Carlo Calvi, now a banker in Canada, hired Katz to look for evidence of foul play. With forensic experts Katz reconstructed the scaffolding from which Calvi was hanged to show his shoes would have had traces of rust had he climbed it to hang himself.

''There was no trace on his shoes, so if he didn't walk on the scaffolding someone must have put him there,'' said Katz.

The mysterious circumstances of Calvi's death cast a long shadow over the Vatican, which was implicated financially in the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano.

The Vatican Bank owned a small part of Ambrosiano and it was found partly responsible for the 1.3 billion dollars in bad debts left by its failure. Calvi was appealing against a four-year sentence when he secretly flew to London in 1982 with a case of papers.

Katz believes Calvi was lured onto a boat on the Thames with the promise of meeting shadowy financiers who could help him save Ambrosiano, when he was murdered and his suicide staged.

The motive, Katz believed, was that Calvi had threatened to squeal on his powerful clients if they let him go to jail.

''Who could Calvi damage most in 1982? The political establishment had most to lose because of the payments being funnelled illegally to them by corporations,'' he said. ''I think the powers that be were trying to send a very strong message.'' Reuters AM DB2224