God’s Banker I 2. Our Thing

Speaker 1 Tito's handmade vodka is America's favorite vodka for a reason.

Speaker 1 From the first legal distillery in Texas, Tito's is six times distilled till it's just right and naturally gluten-free, making it a high-quality spirit that mixes with just about anything.

Speaker 1 From the smoothest martinis to the best Bloody Marys, Tito's is known for giving back, teaming up with nonprofits to serve its communities, and do good for dogs. Make your next cocktail with Tito's.

Speaker 1 Distilled and bottled by Fifth Generation Inc., Austin, Texas. 40% alcohol by volume, savor responsibly.

Speaker 2 Friends of the Pod subscribers can listen to the full season of Shadow Kingdom right now. Join Friends of the Pod at crooked.com slash friends or on Apple Podcasts.

Speaker 2 Campsite media.

Speaker 2 The first thing I wanted to figure out after Mario sent me on this mission was simple.

Speaker 2 Who was God's banker? And I had a plan. Step one, use my frequent flyer miles to fly to Rome.
From there, I'd find my old Vespa, which lay dormant in my grandmother's garage.

Speaker 2 Then, I'd zip to a criminal courthouse, where I'd find transcripts of a big trial Mario had told me about. A trial that happened after Calvey's death.

Speaker 2 These transcripts would be a great primer for the Italian side of the story.

Speaker 2 Finally, I'd Vespa over to the Vatican to gaze upon the buildings where Calvy had apparently built an empire with the Vatican's money.

Speaker 2 But my courthouse visit did not go as planned. The clerk said my Italian lawyer ID didn't work anymore, so I couldn't check out the exact documents I wanted.

Speaker 2 Also, The Vatican was on lockdown for a Pope Francis event.

Speaker 2 So, I pointed my vespa away from St. Peter's and I sped down Via della Conchigliazione, a road, I'd find out later, that Calvey had walked before, a road that actually changed his life.

Speaker 2 But in those early days of my research, I was only after the very basics of Calvey's life and persona.

Speaker 2 And I'm going to be honest, Roberto Calvey is a tough guy to get to know.

Speaker 2 Even with all the books I've unearthed, the news footage I've tracked down in Italian archives, the early years of Calvey's life are still a bit of a mystery.

Speaker 2 I do know that Roberto Calvey wasn't born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He grew up in 1920s Milan, which was the wealthiest city in Italy at the time.

Speaker 2 But his parents were from a remote village in the Alps. Though not poor, they were certainly considered thrifty, austere.

Speaker 2 Calvey's mom sent young Roberto to an exclusive prep school dressed in drab clothes where he actually developed a side hustle, getting paid to do rich kids' homework.

Speaker 2 Calvey's colleagues said he had a chip on his shoulder. As a young man, he volunteered for the Italian cavalry, hoping to raise his social status.

Speaker 2 He ended up fighting for the Axis in Russia, paralyzing three of his fingers. And when he returned home, he didn't have a cushy job waiting for him.

Speaker 2 Calvey had to start from the bottom as a humble clerk for the local bank, the Banco Ambrosiano.

Speaker 2 These data points were easy to find. What has been more difficult for me to figure out is what kind of person Calvey was.
What else motivated him? What scared him? Who were his friends?

Speaker 2 Who were his enemies? To find out more about Calvey the person,

Speaker 2 I first reached out to author Gerald Posner.

Speaker 4 I'm an author and investigative reporter, and I did a book called God's Bankers, which is a financial history of the Vatican.

Speaker 2 And in it, he painted a picture of the kind of banker Calvey was.

Speaker 4 There's no question that Calvey had an unassuming presence when he met people.

Speaker 4 He may not have seemed very aggressive, but he was a domineering, take-no-prisoners, check-every box, control freak down the line.

Speaker 2 Calvey was ambitious. He worked harder than his coworkers.
He was also really smart. He was one of the only bankers at the Ambrosiano who spoke at least three languages.

Speaker 2 And he helped pioneer mutual funds in Italy before they were really a thing.

Speaker 2 By his 30s, Calvey was a manager at the bank, but he had aspirations of climbing to the very top. And this was all happening during a boom time in Italy during the 1960s.

Speaker 2 They called it the Miracolo Economico, the economic miracle. At the time, Italy had one of the fastest growing GDPs in the Western world.

Speaker 5 Milan, a historic town, which today is Italy's richest industrial city.

Speaker 2 Italy's ambition to lead the world in fashions comes nearer to fulfillment every year.

Speaker 5 More than a million people live in this growing manufacturing center. The Fiat 600, over $200 less than the leading French and German imports.
Calculators,

Speaker 5 computers,

Speaker 2 typewriters, systems.

Speaker 5 Aware sells them worldwide. Information.

Speaker 2 Italians with a passion for engines but no money for a car now travel uproariously and happily on their vestras or lambretti.

Speaker 2 Vespas and fiats flying off Italian assembly lines. Color TVs, Fendi, Fellini, La Dolce Vita.

Speaker 2 The economy was bouncing back from World War II, and there was a lot more money flowing generally. Money for big business deals.

Speaker 2 According to Posner, Calvi yearned for a spot in the C-suites of his bank.

Speaker 2 He wanted the riches that the Miraclo Economico promised, but all of the highest positions in his bank seemed to go to Italy's aristocrats, the blue bloods. His boss was literally a duke.

Speaker 2 Meanwhile, Calvey settled into middle age and the middle class. He woke up each day, still dressed in drab, beige clothes.
After 20 years at the bank, his coworkers still snickered behind his back.

Speaker 2 They'd point out how he'd dye his hair, how he'd wear fancy hats and pretend to hold higher positions than he did. The powerlessness and the stagnancy seemed to eat at Calvey.

Speaker 3 Until, that is,

Speaker 2 one day, when he discovered someone who came from a similar background, someone who actually broke through the aristocratic ceiling to become the type of Italian banking superstar Calvey dreamed of.

Speaker 6 He owned holding companies in Liechtenstein and Luxembourg, hotels in Washington, such as the Watergate Complex, as well as in Paris, and banks in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and New York.

Speaker 2 Italian financier Michele Sendona. By the late 1960s, Sendona had a worldwide empire of banks and holding companies.
He had regular lunches with Nixon before he was president.

Speaker 4 Sendona was bold, he was assertive, he was doing big things in Italian finance, and he had grand ambitions. Sendona viewed himself as the king of all financiers.

Speaker 2 And Sendona, like Calvey, came from nothing. He was an outsider from dirt-poor Sicily, born the same year as Calvey.

Speaker 2 Sendona was basically a human blueprint for ascending into an echelon of super wealth.

Speaker 2 And in 1969, Calvey figured out a way to meet him. And that meeting would launch Calvey into a greater financial world, past Milan, past Italy, even beyond any earthly institution, into the heavens.

Speaker 2 But what he didn't know was how this meeting would also drag him down into the underworld and seal his fate.

Speaker 2 From crooked media and campside media, this is Shadow Kingdom, God's Banker.

Speaker 2 I'm Niccolo Mainoni, and this is episode two,

Speaker 2 Our Thing.

Speaker 6 A well-known Milan lawyer was murdered while investigating the bankruptcy of one of Sendona's banks.

Speaker 4 The only shareholder for the Vatican Bank is the Pope, no one else.

Speaker 3 Shadow Kingdom is brought to you by Lumen.

Speaker 2 Did you know that when your metabolism is working properly, you'll feel the benefits in pretty much every other aspect of your life?

Speaker 3 There's a valuable tool, one that I've also found, that gives me insights to create a healthy metabolism for my body.

Speaker 2 It's called Lumen.

Speaker 3 Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach, which is a fancy way of saying it's a device that measures your metabolism through your breath.

Speaker 3 And then there's this connected app, and it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs.

Speaker 3 And based on that, it'll give you a tailored guide to improving your nutrition, your workouts, your sleep, even stress management.

Speaker 3 All you have to do is breathe into your lumen first thing in the morning, and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether, again, you're burning mostly fats or carbs, at which point lumen then gives you a personalized nutrition plan for the day based on your measurements.

Speaker 3 And for those who don't know, your metabolism is basically your body's engine. It's how your body turns the food you eat into the fuel that keeps you going.

Speaker 3 And because your metabolism is at the center of everything your body does, optimal metabolic health translates to a bunch of other benefits, including easier weight management, improved energy levels, better fitness results, better sleep, you name it.

Speaker 3 So take the next step to improving your health and go to lumen.me slash kingdom to get 20% off your lumen. That is l-um-e-n dot me

Speaker 3 slash kingdom for 20% off your purchase. Thank you, Lumen, for sponsoring this episode.

Speaker 8 The second half of the basketball season is here and the race to the playoffs continues on prize picks, the best daily fantasy fantasy sports app to cash in on your favorite sports.

Speaker 8 The app is simple: pick more or less on at least two players for a shot to win up to a thousand times your cash.

Speaker 8 Download the Prize Picks app today and use code FIELD and get $50 instantly when you play $5. That's code FIELD on PrizePicks.
They get $50 instantly when you play $5.

Speaker 8 Win or lose, you'll get $50 for just playing. Guaranteed.
Prize picks, run your game. Must be present in certain states.
Visit PrizePicks.com for restrictions and details.

Speaker 2 It was 1969 when Roberto Calvy walked into Sendona's white granite Milan office building. There he met a little man with thinning hair slicked back, a man with a distinct, raspy voice.

Speaker 2 Calvi wanted to meet me, recalled Sendona, in an interview years later. I said, absolutely.

Speaker 2 Sendona sensed he could use a man like Calvi,

Speaker 2 a banker from the well-established Banco Ambrosiano. The Ambrosiano, Calvey's bank, started as a firm for priests and was still considered to be a Catholic bank.

Speaker 2 But it had grown into one of Italy's largest private lenders. Sendona, a free market guy, told an interviewer that he was very interested in the private sector.

Speaker 2 Sendona thought the Banco Ambrosiano had a lot of room to grow. And in Calvey, he saw the potential for a great business partner.
But in that meeting, Calvey made the first move.

Speaker 2 Calvey told Sendona all about his dreams to run the Ambrosiano and how he wanted to be just like Sendona. Calvey's ambition was on full display.

Speaker 2 Right after Calvey left his office, Sendona picked up the phone and dialed in.

Speaker 2 I knew Calvy's boss, says Sendona. And so I called him to get the lowdown on Calvi.
Calvi's patrician boss picked up the phone and proceeded to tell Sendona that Calvy is sort of a joke.

Speaker 2 Like, did you know Calvi's afraid to fly? I had to hold his hand on his first flight for work.

Speaker 2 In other words, Calvy is a provincial nobody.

Speaker 2 This may have hit Sendona in a special way. Remember, Sendona was a self-made man too, overlooked by the blue bloods and generally ridiculed to no end by the Italian elites.

Speaker 2 Sendona put the phone down and sent word to Calvey.

Speaker 2 Come back.

Speaker 2 I want to see you again.

Speaker 2 As the two got to know each other and started making plans, Sendona told Calvey about an arrangement that sounded too good to be true.

Speaker 2 About six years earlier, in 1963, the new Pope, Paul VI, was elected. And it took him very little time to realize that the Vatican finances were a mess.

Speaker 2 The church, though still super rich, was on the verge of losing a lot of money.

Speaker 4 And over time, it had to figure out how to bring in money. You know, you can sell indulgences and have people send money to the pope, but it's hard to run a whole church based on that.

Speaker 2 According to Gerald Posner, donations were way down and the Vatican needed more liquidity. So much of the church's wealth was tied up in artifacts and real estate.

Speaker 2 Try paying your bills with a Caravaggio.

Speaker 2 Sensing a financial opportunity, Sendona got an audience with the new Pope, Posner again.

Speaker 4 When Pope Paul VI meets with Sendona, who has a reputation for being very clever and smarter than every other banker and a devout Catholic as well, which is very important, the Pope makes the decision himself.

Speaker 4 I'm naming you at this moment as God's banker.

Speaker 2 And Sendona had his own terms.

Speaker 4 Sendona is given essentially by Paul VI the free reins, which is, I don't want to just be an investment advisor telling the Vatican where to put his money.

Speaker 4 I want the ability to actually sign for the Vatican without having to come back for an approval every time.

Speaker 2 Sendona now had the prestige and the assets of the church behind him on a level no one else in the world had.

Speaker 2 Sendona told Calvey that's how he became the head financial advisor. to the Vatican Bank.

Speaker 2 Because, yes, the Vatican has its own bank.

Speaker 2 But unlike most big banks, Sendona didn't answer to a board or have a slew of shareholders looking over his shoulder. He only answered to one guy.

Speaker 4 The only shareholder for the Vatican Bank is the Pope, no one else. It doesn't publish annual reports.

Speaker 4 If you are standing on a street corner in Rome with a suitcase filled with a million dollars, the Italian tax authorities can do something and ask you where you got the cash from.

Speaker 4 You cross the street and you're in Vatican territory. You give that suitcase to a friendly Monsignor who has an account of the Vatican Bank.

Speaker 4 He deposits it because the Vatican Bank's bylaws allow it to take investments in kind, in art, in gold, in cash, in whatever, and it disappears. Italian tax authorities no longer know about it.

Speaker 4 They can't follow it. You don't pay taxes on it.

Speaker 2 Did you catch that? The Vatican Bank, unlike any of the other banks in its vicinity, was unregulated, totally secret.

Speaker 2 Attributes that would be very appealing if you didn't want anyone to know what you were up to.

Speaker 2 Calvi had Italian regulators to answer to at the Banco Ambraziano, but Sendona controlled a black box right in the heart of Rome. And Calvey wanted a piece of that power.

Speaker 4 The relationship between Calvey and Sendona started positive, but that's because Sendona viewed himself as the king of all financiers. He was in as God's banker, and Sendona sold confidence.

Speaker 4 It's one of the things that he was very good at doing. And Calvey was a bit more dour, a bit less outgoing,

Speaker 4 seemed to have less magic if you met him than Sendona did.

Speaker 2 And over the next few years, the boisterous Sendona and his new brooding mentee, Calvey, made the Vatican a ton of money. They played the stock market.
They made real estate deals.

Speaker 2 They brought modern investment banking to the sleepy Vatican Bank.

Speaker 2 But Poster says these guys were not saints. They were opportunists.

Speaker 4 They

Speaker 2 will

Speaker 4 help others in business so long as they can see them helping themselves.

Speaker 2 Sendona and Calvey took full advantage of their connection to the Pope.

Speaker 2 The bankers name-dropped the Vatican constantly and used the reputation of the church to secure huge loans for their own businesses.

Speaker 2 In return, the bankers came up with a plan to massively divest the church's investments in Italy.

Speaker 2 The new scheme funneled the church's money abroad, thus shielding the church from the prying eyes of the Italian state and earned Calvian Sendona a nice profit.

Speaker 4 They weren't taking Vatican investments and then returning to the Vatican 10 or 15 or 20% a year and saying, aren't you happy with that?

Speaker 4 They were instead putting the Vatican into many offshore deals in tax haven countries that would be off the radar for

Speaker 4 international regulators to control. The Vatican didn't have to worry about paying taxes.

Speaker 2 Calvey's career was propelled by his Vatican connections.

Speaker 2 In the early 70s, he was promoted multiple times. He was named general manager of the bank, then managing director.
The biggest newspapers in Italy called it Calvey's arrival into society.

Speaker 2 The president of Italy made Calvey a knight of labor.

Speaker 2 Calvey was celebrating. He was making it to the top.
He'd made so much money that he bought a house in the most exclusive gated community in the Bahamas.

Speaker 2 How far Calvey had come since his days of doing homework for rich kids. Now he was the rich kid, jetting from Milan to New York to the Caribbean, going to parties with famous actresses.

Speaker 2 He'd hitched his fate to Sendona and the Catholic Church and his whole life had changed. And the wealth kept coming.
But eventually, Calvy and his mentor had a falling out.

Speaker 2 Sendona got into trouble with U.S. banking regulators after he bought a Long Island bank in 1972.

Speaker 2 Sendona needed cash to refill accounts that he shouldn't have been spending from. He needed Calvy's help.
And the newly knighted Calvy kind of blew him off.

Speaker 2 Calvi now had offshore operations, a bunch of cash, and a direct line to the Pope.

Speaker 2 So he offered Sendona a little money from the Banquam Braziano, but not nearly what his old mentor needed.

Speaker 2 And without Calvey's help, that trouble that Sendona was in, it snowballed. Until...

Speaker 10 25 years in jail, a $207,000 fine.

Speaker 10 That was the sentence handed down to Michele Sendona, the Italian financier, convicted of a multi-million dollar fraud that led to the biggest bank failure in our country's history.

Speaker 2 But Sendona's downfall turned out to be Calvey's big break.

Speaker 2 He could take over Sendona's role with the Vatican. He alone could be God's banker.

Speaker 2 And in doing so, he would take on some of Sendona's Sendona's most dangerous clients, too.

Speaker 2 That's after the break.

Speaker 2 This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. If you're in this far, then I'm assuming you've probably listened to some tales of malfeasance, financial crimes of all sorts, maybe some heartache.

Speaker 2 And while I don't want to drag the good people at BetterHelp into the world of financial intrigue, I cannot help but wonder, what if just a handful of our protagonists had had access to easy, low-stakes therapy?

Speaker 2 Would the story have unfolded differently? But therapy isn't just for those in crisis. It's for perspective, for self-awareness, for learning how to step back.

Speaker 2 And unlike the financial statements of our protagonists, it's actually quite easy and simple to access. BetterHelp makes therapy affordable and convenient, serving over 5 million people worldwide.

Speaker 2 And though it has a network of more than 30,000 therapists, you can also just switch your therapists anytime at no extra cost. So build your support system with BetterHelp.

Speaker 2 Visit betterhelp.com/slash kingdom to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelphelp.com slash kingdom.

Speaker 1 Experience a membership that backs what you're building with American Express Business Platinum.

Speaker 1 Get two times membership rewards points per dollar on eligible purchases and key business categories, as well as on each eligible purchase of $5,000 or more.

Speaker 1 On up to $2 million in eligible purchases per calendar year. American Express Business Platinum.
There's nothing like it. Terms apply.
Learn more at AmericanExpress.com/slash business dash platinum.

Speaker 2 Calvey got his wish. By the late 70s, he alone was God's banker.

Speaker 4 It does break right for Calvey in the sense that he's able to market himself

Speaker 4 and his bank as a very conservative financial option.

Speaker 2 But Calvey wasn't satisfied. He wanted the Banco Ambrosiano to keep growing and growing until it was the biggest bank in Italy, maybe Europe.
Posner said Calvey was looking for shortcuts.

Speaker 2 And that meant taking on clients with a lot of money of, let's say, questionable origin, like

Speaker 2 the mafia. This is a claim that came up multiple times in my reporting.
Mario mentioned it. Reporters brought it up at Calvey's death.

Speaker 2 Court cases tied Calvey's mentor, Michael Sendona, to the mob and murder.

Speaker 6 A well-known Milan lawyer was murdered while investigating the bankruptcy of one of Sendona's banks, and Sendona's name was linked to several murders believed committed by organized crime.

Speaker 2 Calvey definitely took on his mentor's papal clients, but did he take on Sendona's illicit clients as well?

Speaker 2 If I could prove Calvey's ties to the mafia, that would substantiate at least part of Mario's story. It would still be a fairly logical explanation to Calvey's death.

Speaker 2 Calvey got tied up with the mafia, maybe he racked up big debts, they killed him.

Speaker 2 Sad, but no big conspiracy. A resolution that would satisfy the English and Italian sides of my brain.
The problem, I found, was that Calvey's mafia ties were hard to substantiate.

Speaker 2 Everyone seemed to say he was working with the mafia.

Speaker 12 Senor Calvey's widow and son maintain that he was murdered in a plot which implicates the Vatican Vatican and the Italian mafia.

Speaker 13 There has been widespread conjecture that Calvey was deliberately killed, probably by the mafia, following the collapse of his business.

Speaker 2 But I couldn't get a straight answer on what Calvy did for the mafia. So I put my Italian lawyer hat on and I went through decades of Calvi-related legal documents.

Speaker 2 There wasn't a smoking gun, no wire transfer from John Gotti to Roberto Calvey, but there were a few leads, several names of mafia leaders or mafiosi that Sendona could have introduced Calvi to.

Speaker 2 These were members of the Sicilian mafia known as cosanostera. That translates in English to our thing.

Speaker 2 They're arguably the most organized, most deadly, most famous Italian criminal enterprise.

Speaker 2 Exactly the type of people I'd hoped to stay away from when I decided not to be a prosecutor in Italy and practice cushy, comfortable, safe corporate law instead.

Speaker 2 But here I was spending months looking for mafiosi who might have worked with Roberto Calvey and reaching out to them. And there was one former Cosinostra soldier I thought might speak to me.

Speaker 2 He was mentioned in some of the court records I found, and he described Calvi in business with his mafia family.

Speaker 2 I wanted him to agree to talk with me on the record and to prove to him just how serious I was, I needed to get on a plane to Europe.

Speaker 2 Vincenzo Calcara was a soldier for one of the most powerful mafia families, the Castel Vitrano family.

Speaker 2 He was very close to the top boss, so he'd be privy to knowledge at the highest level of his organization. But as a soldier, I was also hoping he'd talk me through the mechanics of how the cash moved.

Speaker 2 The address he gave me was in a little town close to Italy's border with Switzerland. It was a little apartment building that sat behind a train track overlooking the mountains.

Speaker 2 As I walked up, I was running through the questions I wanted to ask. More than anything, I wanted to know, was it true that Roberto Calvi dealt directly with Cosanostra? And what did he do for them?

Speaker 2 I was greeted warmly by Calcara's daughters. and sat in a living room overlooking the train station.
Minutes slowly ticked by, and I did my best to keep my nerves at bay.

Speaker 2 Then a 66-year-old man in a three-piece suit walked in.

Speaker 2 Vincenzo Calcada strolled in with the swagger, the confidence of a showman. He knew the spotlight was on him, and it seemed like everyone else in the room knew it too.

Speaker 2 As he gave me a once over, I felt myself shrink.

Speaker 2 He looked at my tangled hair and tattered sneakers before giving a little shrug.

Speaker 2 As soon as he felt settled in the room, Kalkara began to test me.

Speaker 2 He started telling me about beautiful guns he'd stolen, epic robberies, and initiation rituals.

Speaker 2 I could tell he wanted to see what reactions he could elicit.

Speaker 2 He wanted to control the conversation.

Speaker 2 The former mafioso leaned in to tell me about a small dog he had when he was much, much younger.

Speaker 2 Black with white spots,

Speaker 2 a little guy that would follow him around.

Speaker 2 But his mafia boss

Speaker 2 told him the dog was a sign of weakness.

Speaker 2 He was testing testing Calcara's dedication to the Casinostra family.

Speaker 2 The boss told Calcara to get rid of the puppy.

Speaker 2 And as Kalkara said this, I noticed him making a finger gun motion.

Speaker 2 Barely into our interview, Calcara was telling me how he loved and nurtured a puppy and then killed it at a moment's notice to prove his loyalty.

Speaker 2 I'm pretty sure if you could see my face at this moment in the interview, it would have been red as I tried to force out a polite nod.

Speaker 2 Anyway, it's at this point that I do my best to shift the conversation away from dog murder and get into why he's willing to talk to me about Calvi.

Speaker 2 And he explained that 30 years ago, he'd been arrested for robbery, extortion, and attempted murder. And now that Kalkara was out of jail, he was itching to tell his story,

Speaker 2 to relive his glory days without fear of being prosecuted again.

Speaker 2 I moved the conversation on to Roberto Calvi.

Speaker 2 Calcara's boss told him he was going to meet a big banker who handled the interests of Cosa Nostra, Roberto Calvey,

Speaker 2 and that he was a big deal with global influence.

Speaker 2 Fuck, global?

Speaker 2 Who the fuck does he think he is? Jesus Christ?

Speaker 2 Is how Calcara said he reacted.

Speaker 2 And his boss clarified that it's fine, that Calvi should be respected, that he looked after the interests of Cosanostra and their money.

Speaker 2 All right, so Calcara confirmed that Calvey worked for Cosanostra and had their respect.

Speaker 2 But did Calcara have more evidence that might connect Cosanostra to Calvey's death or even a possible motive for murder?

Speaker 2 Like some movie gangster, Calkara answered my question with a story.

Speaker 2 Shortly after Sendona's fall, Calcara got a big call from his mafia's boss's boss. They needed someone to deliver $10 million to Rome.

Speaker 2 I can go immediately, Kalkara told the boss. He stuffed his bags with guns into $10 million,

Speaker 2 then slipped into a stolen police uniform, passed airport security, and flew from Sicily to Rome.

Speaker 2 And just like any passenger, Kalkara trudged through the arrivals gate and waited for his checked bags. He sipped on a coffee, watching the porters huffing as they tried to lift his suitcases.

Speaker 2 Kalkara smirked. Nobody knew what he had in his bags.

Speaker 2 He nonchalantly rolled his bags outside, where an unusual caravan of cars was waiting for him.

Speaker 2 He spotted a black Mercedes with diplomatic license plates from the Vatican. And out of that Mercedes stepped several priests.

Speaker 2 As Calcaro remembers, his mafia cohorts kissed the rings and cheeks of the Monsignors.

Speaker 2 With the niceties at the airport over, the mafia Vatican crew hopped into cars and made their way to a villa on the outskirts of Rome.

Speaker 2 As the cars pulled into the villa, they ground to a halt.

Speaker 2 Calcara says he got out and wheeled the million-dollar suitcases over to his boss, who took them deeper into the villa.

Speaker 2 Calcara's boss told him to stand guard. Do not let any strangers in.

Speaker 2 If anyone gives you trouble, shoot them.

Speaker 2 Calcara stood at attention, ready to kill invaders just like he killed his dog.

Speaker 2 Quiet Calvy, with his bald head, thick mustache, and slight slouch, approached Calkara. The mafioso let him through.

Speaker 2 Inside the villa, the mafia men talked with Calvy and the priests for several hours before they left with the suitcases to bring back to the Vatican.

Speaker 2 So now, Kalkara can connect Calvi to managing the mafia's money. But there was more.
Right before we wrapped up, as if you were reading my mind, he opened up about one last thing.

Speaker 2 There was a meeting, he said,

Speaker 2 shortly before Calvi died

Speaker 2 with the top Cosanostra bosses. They gathered to discuss one thing:

Speaker 2 where the hell had all their money gone?

Speaker 2 Their international investments, their money had vanished, he said.

Speaker 2 And these mafia bosses were trying to figure out if Roberto Calvey had made an honest mistake in bad investments or if he was trying to screw them over.

Speaker 2 Whatever the outcome of that decision, this was not a good meeting for Roberto Calvey, at least according to Calcara.

Speaker 2 Also, according to Calcara, Calvey did have mafia money and he lost it. So, potentially, the mafia would have had the means and the motive to kill the banker.

Speaker 2 It sounded incredible, fantastical, even.

Speaker 2 But the stories became more likely as I fact-checked them. Calcara's story matched with other testimony from other mafiosi.

Speaker 2 And then I called a legendary Italian judge who prosecuted the mafia.

Speaker 2 I'm interested if Calvey knew that his bank was used for mafia money laundering.

Speaker 14 I could say that Calvey knew that his bank was used for money laundering.

Speaker 2 Wow, for mafia money laundering.

Speaker 14 For mafia money laundering. Wow.
Wow.

Speaker 2 This judge was an expert at investigating illicit cash flows and he said that Calvey was the money man for multiple mafia families

Speaker 2 But if that's true, what the hell had Calvey done with the mafia's money?

Speaker 2 Kalkara's bosses wanted to know. I wanted to know turns out the answer to that question involves an organization even scarier even more sinister than the mafia itself.

Speaker 2 An organization that you've likely never heard of.

Speaker 2 A secretive underground order that sucked millions upon millions of dollars from Roberto Calvi.

Speaker 2 That's next time on Shadow Kingdom.

Speaker 5 The battle lines have been forming in Italy for months.

Speaker 10 Nearly 1,000 of Italy's elite, including three cabinet members, were allegedly members of an outlawed, super-secret, super-evil.

Speaker 15 A massive explosion today in a train station in Bologna, Italy killed at least 76 people and injured almost 200 more.

Speaker 2 Oh, this system is completely rotten, completely corrupt, completely illegitimate. Therefore, it's okay to blow up this entire building.

Speaker 2 Shadow Kingdom is a production of crooked media and campsite media. It's hosted and reported by me, Nicola Mainoni, with additional reporting by Simon Adzecki and Joe Hawthorne.

Speaker 2 The show is written by Joe Hawthorne, Ashley Ann Kriegbaum, and me. Joe Hawthorne is our lead producer, and Ashley Ann Krigbaum is our managing producer.
Tracy Samuelson is our story editor.

Speaker 2 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 Ewen Lai Tremuen.

Speaker 2 Voice acting by Bonnie Biagini, Andrea Bianchi, Ferrante Cosma, Luca de Gennado, Michele Teodori, and Mustafa Zialin.

Speaker 2 Field recording by Justin Trieger, Jonathan Zenti, Pete Shev, Jonathan Grubert, and Joanna Broder. Fact-checking by Zoe Sullivan.

Speaker 2 Our executive producers are me, Niccolo Mainoni, along with Sarah Geismer, Katie Long, and Allison Falsetta from Crooked Media.

Speaker 2 Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, Matt Scher, and Vanessa Gregoriadis are the executive producers at Campsite Media.

Speaker 2 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.

Speaker 2 The holidays mean more travel, more shopping, more time online, and more personal info in more places that could expose you more to identity theft.

Speaker 2 But Life Lock monitors millions of data points per second. If your identity is stolen, our U.S.-based restoration specialists will fix it guaranteed or your money back.

Speaker 2 Don't face drained accounts, fraudulent loans, or financial losses alone. Get more holiday fun and less holiday worry with Life Lock.
Save up to 40% your first year. Visit lifelock.com/slash podcast.

Speaker 2 Terms apply.

Speaker 1 This holiday, discover meaningful gifts for everyone on your list at Kay. Not sure where to start? Our jewelry experts are here to help you find or create the perfect gift, in-store or online.

Speaker 1 Book your appointment today and unwrap Love This Season, only at Kay.