The Last Supper - The Mafia, the Masons and the Killing of Roberto Calvi

The Last Supper - The Mafia, the Masons and the Killing of Roberto Calvi

by Philip Willan

Robinson, HK$148

Roberto Calvi, chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's largest private bank before its collapse in 1982, was found in June that year hanged from scaffolding under London's Blackfriars Bridge. The inquest ruled it was suicide. Conspiracy theorists disagreed, as did Calvi's family, who wanted his US$10 million insurance.

A second inquest into the death of the man dubbed 'God's banker' by the tabloids heard of Calvi's involvement with the mafia (he's said to have embezzled its funds), the Vatican (Banco Ambrosiano's biggest shareholder, Calvi channelled funds to Solidarity in Poland) and P2 ('the black friars' who operated under the cover of a Masonic lodge). Suicide was replaced with an open finding. In October 2005, the trial of five people indicted by Italian magistrates for the murder of Calvi began in a fortified courtroom in Rome.

A verdict is expected in a month or two, which gives Philip Willan's book The Last Supper - The Mafia, the Masons and the Killing of Roberto Calvi its currency as a paperback original. Willan covers events surrounding Calvi's death with a solid summation of evidence heard during the Rome trial. But he keeps his own counsel on what he thinks happened. Not fair.