God’s Banker I 5. The Fixers

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In the middle of a hot summer night in 1981, Roberto Calvi sat in a prison cell and began to cry.

He'd been arrested just a week after the assassination attempt on John Paul II and had spent two months wasting away in his cell.

Calvi's stubble was beginning to show.

His eyes were red from lack of sleep.

His beige prison jumpsuit stunk of BO.

Calvy had been stripped of his designer clothes right down to his shoelaces, and he hadn't had a good night's sleep in months.

His cellmates would play cards and they'd listen to music all night, keeping him from sleeping.

Calvi was charged with breaking currency export laws.

Basically, Italy wanted to protect its economy by forcing people to keep their money in the country.

Yeah, it's illegal to export a certain amount of capital abroad in Italy.

I asked Francisco Pazienza, the former spy who worked for Calvey, about Calvey's arrest.

And he said what I heard from lots of people, which is everybody ignored this law.

To be clear, Calvey was up to a bunch of financial shenanigans.

But it's also pretty normal for bankers to work internationally, sending cash outside of their country.

So arresting Calvey for this kind of felt like arresting a pedestrian for jaywalking.

It seemed like prosecutors were going after Calvey to send a political message.

Some reporters claimed this was a left-wing vendetta against Calvey.

Others suggested that prosecutors wanted to send a message to tax sheets, to other rich Italians who were shadily trying to conceal money abroad.

Either way, Patsenza said this was a shock to Calvey's world.

Well, when Calvy was arrested, I was just in my office in Rome, and my secretary said, Listen, listen, listen, listen.

I heard

the television.

I saw that he was arrested.

Are you helping him now that he's in jail?

Are you giving him strategies?

I organized a contact with uh the chaplain of the jail.

I told the chaplain to say that we are very close to him, don't worry, and so on.

Why did you want Calvi to know that you're with him and everything's okay?

Because just to keep him

calm, quiet.

While Calvy was in prison, Patsienza was still in contact with the Vatican and politicians around Italy.

He sent word to Calvy through the prison chaplain, keep calm, keep quiet.

We're with you.

Don't talk to prosecutors about the Vatican, Masons, any of it.

This could be a reassuring message, sure,

we've got your back, but I can also see how this could be threatening, like, don't talk or else.

I don't know which way Calvey read Patsienza's message, but I do know he didn't do as he was told.

Investigative journalist Gerald Posner said that jail just sort of broke Calvey.

This was a man obsessed with his own personal security, and now suddenly he's in an Italian prison, not very clean, not very sparkling, not not washed down once a day, with a lot of prisoners in a shared space.

Calvy hates that experience.

The idea that he could be sentenced one day and sent there to him is as bad an example of the future as he could possibly imagine.

He'd been denied bail multiple times.

He'd stopped leaving his cell during the day and stopped going outside to exercise.

At one point, he got pneumonia.

I mean, he was literally withering away.

So according to Posner, on a July night in 1981, Calvey called three prosecutors to the prison and told them, you must get me out of here.

I can't take it anymore.

So then he figures, okay, so what can I do?

He did what he knew he shouldn't do.

He started offering up information in exchange for a deal.

Okay, that's it.

I'll tell you what.

P2, they're behind it all.

They've got every conspiracy.

They're the masterminds.

They're pulling the strings.

They're the puppet masters.

Posner told me at that point, Calvey let it all out.

He claimed he'd made payments to politicians on behalf of P2.

The P2 Masons were behind crooked oil deals and the big Italian newspaper he'd bought.

He wept and wept, but the prosecutors demanded more.

I read some Italian reporting of this exchange that quoted Calvey as telling the prosecutors, I'm the last wheel on the cart, and I'm simply in the service of someone else.

But who controls you?

The prosecutors demanded.

At this point, Calvy realized he'd gone too far.

He shut down.

And then the prosecutors come in and say, we need more.

You can't just say that.

We need more.

And then he says, oh, I was wrong about that.

No, it's not true.

I take it all back.

The prosecutors grumbled and said they weren't sure how much they could do for Calvy.

Over the next few days, Calvey retracted much of what he said about P2.

He also sent desperate messages to his lawyers while his body and his career continued to deteriorate.

Meanwhile, a public trial was on the horizon, and his chances of being found innocent were looking worse and worse.

About a week after his meeting with prosecutors, guards discovered God's banker collapsed and unconscious in his jail cell.

From Crooked Media and Campside Media, this is Shadow Kingdom, God's

I'm Niccolo Mainoni, and this is episode 5 of the Fixers.

I'm afraid all you would talk about was death.

Always.

The moment it starts to unravel, it all starts to unravel.

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In court, on the morning of July 9th, one of Calvey's defense lawyers made a surprising announcement.

Gotts banker had attempted suicide and had been rushed to the hospital.

This is a really sensitive part of the Calvey story, so I want to tread carefully here.

It's tough to say for certain what Calvey was thinking at this moment and what his intentions were.

His family said his life was never actually in danger, that this wasn't a quote-unquote real attempt.

But it feels important to acknowledge that Calvey had a history of suicide attempts, especially given how he died.

And picturing him there in that moment, I really do feel for him.

I don't think Calvey started out trying to make a billion-dollar criminal empire, but I can see how Calvey's first fraud led to a lie, then a bigger lie, and a bigger lie.

And there's something so tragic, so Shakespearean about a man who's gone too far, who's been swallowed up by his own crimes.

Calvey had always been able to stay one step ahead of trouble in the past, always found someone to save him, someone to protect him.

But his arrest made it clear that any protection was now gone.

Also, Calvey had talked to authorities in jail, despite Patsienza's warning not to.

He was now a potential liability for a dangerous list of associates who might prefer his mouth to be closed permanently.

Soon after Calvey's suicide attempt, he was officially convicted of those export violations and then was let out of prison pending appeal.

But the violence Calvey had seemed to keep at bay was about to hit close to home.

And I had just the person to ask about it.

Hi, Philip.

Hi.

This is Philip Willen, a British expat who lives in Rome and writes for The Times, the British newspaper.

He's written two books about Roberto Calvey and spent over 20 years trying to piece together the final weeks of the banker's life.

Over the course of my reporting, Willen and I have become friends.

We've talked over a dozen times, but this visit was the first time we'd met in person.

I traveled to Rome because he promised to open his personal archive for me.

What's in here?

Yeah,

opening the seal.

Yes, what do we have?

These are

tapes of some of the interviews

that I did.

We've got

Roberto Rossone.

He's Calvey's VP.

Yes.

Willen had recordings of interviews he'd done with Calvey's family, with mafiosos, diplomats, and many other people who knew Calvey, including Roberto Rozzone, Calvey's deputy at the Banco Ambrosiano.

These were people I would have loved to interview, but most of them are now dead.

As soon as I left Willen, I rushed to have these tapes digitized.

Handing them over, I felt this pang of anxiety.

And then, a couple of days later, I got this tidy list of files back.

I could just hit play from the convenience of my laptop.

I started with the Rosone tapes.

Hitting play,

the first thing I heard Rozzone say was,

So I opened the door.

My driver was waiting by the corner, and I see a handsome guy.

Rozzone described an afternoon in the spring of 1982 after Calvey was out of prison.

Rozzone was leaving the Banco Ambrosiano when a young man approached him on the street and held up a gun.

We've asked an actor to read Razzone's transcript here.

And this was one of those moments in life where you see what's happening, but you don't fully understand.

When Rozzone was asked about the Calvi affair, this was the first thing he talked about.

Staring down the barrel of a gun.

The man points a gun at me and shoots.

But the shot didn't end up firing.

So he starts to reload the gun.

And in the act of reloading, the gun somehow goes off.

And the bullet went right by my testicles.

And back then, I was more attached to them than I am now.

Rozzone laughed about it after the fact, but in that moment, he watched as his bodyguard opened fire on the shooter.

The hitman fell to the ground, dead, while Rozzone fell, clutching his leg.

This story was the exact kind of attack Calvey had been afraid of.

It's why he'd paid for armored cars, armed security, and had gotten involved with P2, which had promised him protection, all in the hopes of avoiding this kind of attack.

It was shocking to hear Rozzone describe his own shooting, but perhaps more surprising was that Rozzone blamed Calvey's inner circle for the shooting.

Rozzone said that things had gotten increasingly disorganized at the Banco Ambroziano after Calvey's arrest.

Suspicious loans, shady businessmen coming in and out.

And Rizzoni blamed a new business associate of Calvey's for the shooting.

Someone Calvey had met and had started confiding in right after he was released from prison.

A man named Flavio Carboni.

If you and I run a red light, we get caught.

We get a ticket.

But Carboni, a man so utterly underqualified, he somehow kept everyone off his back.

Carboni was a powerful construction magnate, a bit of a lobbyist with high-level government connections.

He was someone you could pay to get you out of a jam, a fixer of sorts.

He had a lot of experience getting out of trouble.

They tried Carboni in something like 10 trials.

Have you ever heard of any of them?

No, because to everyone's surprise, he is always acquitted.

even in the face of incontrovertible evidence.

Rizzoni thought Carboni headed out for him.

That's because Carboni had been asking the Banquam Braziano for all these shady loans, and Rozzoni had been denying them.

I kept listening to the tape, captivated by Rozzone,

when suddenly he dropped this incredible piece of news.

The bank's security guard shot the assailant as he was riding away in a motorbike.

He got him right in the back of the head, and then they would find that he had on him the phone number of Carboni.

So this was nuts like a huge red flag.

If Carboni was trying to kill high-level Ambrosiano bankers, I needed to go much deeper on him.

I asked Patsienza what he knew about him.

Who was Carboni, first of all?

How would you describe him?

Carboni was a very intelligent man, but was a son of a bitch.

He got a lot of money from Calvi.

Patsensa explained that in July of 1981, Calvey was recovering from his suicide attempt and was out of jail for now pending his appeal.

So after Calvey got out of jail, Patsensa organized a vacation for him on the island of Sardinia,

which happened to be Carboni's hometown.

It was a nice, thoughtful idea, a chance to recuperate, maybe do some business.

And one day I met Carboni with another boat close to

a beach.

So I say, hey, listen,

voila.

Patsienza knew Carboni had connections in the justice system that he might be able to lean on to keep Calvy free.

So Patsiensa organized a quote-unquote chance encounter with Calvey and Carboni.

Carboni started charming Calvey, joking with him, apparently even making the banker laugh.

He invited Calvey onto his yacht and gave him a big wheel of pecorino cheese, which to me sounds like someone doing an impression of an over-the-top Italian lobbyist.

In fact, Patsienza started feeling a little threatened, a little jealous maybe.

Carbon at that point, he was thinking to take Calvi from my hands and handle him directly.

Calvi completely abandoned himself on the hands of that piece of shit of Carbone.

Not that Patsensa is still upset about it or anything.

Coming back from vacation, Calvey was determined to prove he he could still run the Banco Ambrosiano.

He'd been temporarily replaced as chairman while he was in jail, but now that he was free, he made his way to the executive elevator and up to the Ambrosiano boardroom, where he greeted employees as if everything was normal.

He took back his chairmanship and told employees that he would steady the ship.

Gerald Posner again.

That shows you the hold that Calvey had on the bank.

The bank does not demand his resignation.

They say, okay, that's fine.

You're still running the bank.

It's okay.

And he stays there with an iron hand and he doubles down on many of the things that later get him in trouble.

All the while, he continued to see Carboni more and Patsensa less.

After vacationing together, the two would often meet at Calvey's home in Milan, at his vacation home near the Swiss border.

They would have long, intense, private conversations together.

Carboni organized meetings with high-profile ministers for Calvey and gave him business advice because the world didn't know it yet, but Calvey knew that all was not well at the Bancombroziano.

The bank's stock price had been artificially inflated as Calvey secretly bought more and more shares, but those shares began to lose value when Calvey was arrested.

Also, the bank had way more debt than was publicly known.

And so, yet again, Calvey searched for a way out.

A bailout for his bank.

Throughout the summer of 1981 and into the fall, he looked for new financial partners.

He met with Libyan, Saudi, and Iranian investors.

He talked about negotiating a deal with Opus Day, a secretive organization within the Catholic Church, and ENI, Italy's state-run oil conglomerate.

In November, Calvey recruited one of the most respected businessmen in Italy to join the Ambrosiano board.

But the new board member stepped down after serving only a few months and sold a stake in the bank.

He said only that he was appalled by what he found.

By January of 1982, Calvey was really beginning to lose it.

He was still appealing his conviction for illegal export control.

The Italian government had taken his passport away, which meant he couldn't travel for business.

Author Gerald Posner again.

You yanked the passport and you suddenly essentially locked the person down to Italy.

And when that happened to Calvey, he was absolutely stunned by that.

In February, Italian regulators followed up on Calvey's mafia and mason ties.

They threatened to take over Calvey's bank if he didn't reveal more information about his shell companies.

In March, Ambraziano board members openly questioned Calvey during a meeting.

They were no longer his yes men.

Calvey has lost all control by this point and his desperation is showing in every possible way.

He is a man whose desperation is controlling everything he does.

And what Calvey probably could not see is the moment it starts to unravel, it all starts to unravel.

It's like putting your finger in the dike hoping to stop the flood from coming and then another leak stops and another leak starts and you run out of fingers before the whole thing starts to leak.

By the end of March, we know Calvey had just two and a half months left to live.

And as the calendar flipped toward June, Calvey received threats that cut deeper than those at the Bancom Broziano.

Threats that weren't financial, but personal.

Someone was following his family.

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A big chunk of the money Calvi had borrowed, 300 million, was due to be repaid at the end of June 1982.

Part of that was due to big institutional banks.

Part of it was due to the Vatican, and part of it was reportedly due to the mafia.

But that borrowed money, remember, Calvey had given a ton of it to the far-right Masons who weren't going to pay him back.

And he'd used a lot of it to buy shares in his own bank.

But since those shares had plummeted in value after his arrest, Calvey did not have the money to pay what was due.

In the past, Calvey had always been able to find new investors or take out new loans to repay the old loans.

But now that he'd been convicted of a crime, he was nervous his whole house of cards might topple and take him down with it.

I remember once he came through the front door.

He took me in his arms and he threw me up in the air four or five times.

We were overjoyed.

Clara Calvey, his wife, spoke to a journalist after his death.

The translation read here by an actor.

She said that Roberto Calvey's mood would swing from mad joy to sobbing depression.

Another time, I was already in bed sleeping, and he was coming back from Rome.

At that point, he was already going back and forth for these trips, and he could no longer control the bank.

bank.

It'd been a while now that he couldn't control the bank.

Anyway, he came into bed and just burst into tears.

I tried to comfort him best I could and then he fell asleep.

He was tired.

He was so tired.

Throughout 1982, Calvey told his wife he thought multiple people were after his family.

They were so worried, they stopped letting the normal house cleaners in.

The circle of trust tightened.

We couldn't have housekeepers living with us anymore.

He'd get up, he'd look at me over and over, and I couldn't bear his eyes.

At one point, Calvi took out a gun and began to clean it in front of his family, mumbling that he needed it for protection.

His new emotional state scared Clara.

I have so much remorse now, but at a certain point, I just refused to go to him.

And my daughter would say, Mom, why don't you want to go and see dad?

And I told her, because I'm afraid.

All he would talk about was death, always.

As May turned to June, Calvy didn't seem to have a plan.

He bounced between trying to figure out how to save his bank and sobbing at home with his family.

In a fit of despair, Roberto packed his wife's bags and practically forced her out of the country.

Calvy's son, Carlo, was already living in the U.S.

at the time and picked his mom up at the airport in Washington, D.C.

When she arrived, I went to pick her up, and I remember this palpable tension.

Carlo described his dad's time on the run as part of his testimony in a 2005 court case.

Again, this is an English translation.

As soon as she stepped off the plane, she told me about an episode.

She said that my dad had found himself in a dark room with an official from the finance police, and he had been shown some documents that had truly scared him.

It was a situation where you had a threat that was palpable, and it made her really, really scared.

This is the first thing my mom told me right as she arrived at the airport.

These were documents about a legal proceeding that, you know, my mom says were a real, real threat for my dad.

Soon after Clara landed in Washington, she and Carlos started to suspect they were being watched, though by whom they didn't know.

There was no doubt in our minds that we were followed all the way home.

There, a car stopped right in front of our house and stayed there for most of the night, maybe the whole night.

It spooked them enough to reach out to local law enforcement for protection.

Then, on June 9th, just a week before his death, Roberto Calvey held a dinner at his office in the Banco Ambrosiano.

Multiple witnesses recounted the scene to print reporters.

Overlooking the lights of Milan, Calvey hosted French and Austrian bankers to talk about an acquisition of Ambrosiano's subsidiaries.

The bankers mulled a $200 million deal over fine wine and pristine silverware.

Calvi was uncharacteristically social, making small talk about his life and debating the Falklands War that was raging off the coast of Argentina.

He spoke in French, playing the part of the suave CEO, acting as if his board wasn't actively rebelling against him, as if his empire wasn't falling apart.

The men sipped wine and chatted deep into the night.

But as the clock approached midnight, Calvy seemed distracted.

Dessert was barely finished when Roberto Calvi suddenly stood up and said he had to go.

His fellow bankers caught off guard and began to ask where their host was going, but Calvy waved them off.

Let's talk again soon.

You can get in touch with my foreign department.

Roberto Calvi rushed out the door, almost running for the elevator.

One dinner guest recalled trying to follow him, but as the guests saw Calvi in the elevator and tried to wave him down,

the doors closed.

The remaining bankers turned toward one another.

One raised his eyebrows, saying,

like the devil, he's disappeared toward hell.

A day later, Calvi's wife got a call.

Patienza called me.

He was screaming and crying, saying, Clara, we can't find him.

And I was a bit shaken and said, who can't you find?

And he said,

Roberto, he's been gone for 24 hours.

We don't know where he is.

We don't know where he's hiding.

Roberto Calvi was missing, and he only had a week to live.

Next time on Shadow Kingdom.

In other news oversees today, yet another chapter in what is shaping up to be a major banking scandal involving the Vatican.

I remember the fireplace and he was burning some of the paper that he had picked out from the briefcase.

The last call we had together, he said he's gonna blow up as a crazy, crazy thing.

Behind the facade of respectability, Calvy had become entangled in a web of evil and corruption.

I can't stand this anymore.

Shadow Kingdom is a production of crooked media and campside media.

It's hosted and reported by me, Niccolò Mainoni, with additional reporting by Simone Azeki and Joe Hawthorne.

The show is written by Joe Hawthorne, Ashley Ann Kriegbaum, and me.

Joe Hawthorne is our lead producer and Ashley Ann Kriegbaum is our managing producer.

Tracy Samuelson is our story editor.

Sound design, mix, and mastering by Mark McAdam.

Our theme song and original score are composed by me and Mark McAdam.

Our studio engineer is E.W.

Tremuen.

Voice acting by Bonnie Biagini, Andrea Bianchi, Ferrante Cosma, Luca DeGennado, Michele Teodori, and Mustafa Zialin.

Field recording by Justin Trieger, Jonathan Zenti, Zenti, Pete Chev, Jonathan Grubert, and Joanna Broder.

Fact-checking by Zoe Sullivan.

Our executive producers are me, Niccolo Mainoni, along with Sarah Geismer, Katie Long, and Allison Falsetta from Crooked Media.

Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, Matt Scher, and Vanessa Gregoriadis are the executive producers at Campsite Media.

One last thing before we go.

You can also listen to Shadow Kingdom in Italian.

Look up Il Banchiere di Dio, wherever you get your podcasts.