Four people accused of murdering 'God's Banker' Roberto Calvi in London 25 years ago were acquitted by a Rome court Wednesday.
The four charged with premeditated murder - jailed Mafia boss Pippo Calo', Sardinian wheeler-dealer Flavio Carboni, Rome crime boss Ernesto Diotallevi and smuggler Silvano Victor - were acquitted for insufficient evidence.
But the prosecution said the wording of the verdict "proves that this was murder and we will go forward in our search for the truth".
None of the defendants was in court to hear the verdict.
Carboni's lawyer told reporters that the outcome of the trial "crushed a prosecution theory based on nothing".
The prosecution is expected to appeal the verdict, which is the first in Italy's three-tiered justice system.
A fifth defendant in the trial, Carboni's former girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig, was also cleared after the prosecution had asked for charges against her to be dropped.
Calvi, found hanging under London's Blackfrair's Bridge in 1982, had been a leading light in Italian banking circles for many years. In 1975 he became chairman and managing director of the Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's biggest private bank.
His death was originally ruled a suicide but Italian prosecutors later accused the defendants of killing him in revenge for not paying back laundered money to the Mafia.
Prosecutors claimed there were at least three motives for the killing.
These included Calvi's mismanagement of the Mafia's money; the possibility that he would reveal how it was laundered by the Ambrosiano; and to gain leverage among Calvi's extensive network of contacts in masonic lodges, the subversive Propaganda Due (P2) lodge, Vatican bank Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), political and institutional figures, and public-sector agencies.
Defence attorneys dismissed the claims as "fantasy".
About a dozen people are still under investigation for the murder, including former P2 chief Licio Gelli.
The investigation into the death of Calvi, who earned the nickname 'God's Banker' by working closely with IOR, was re-opened ten years ago.
Calvi was found hanging under the well-known London landmark in June 1982, pockets bulging with banknotes and bricks. The suicide verdict came a few months after his death.
The second autopsy indicated that someone put the bricks in Calvi's pockets before stringing him up.
According to theories aired over the years by informants, Calvi worked hand-in-hand with Mafia-linked banker Michele Sindona - killed in jail by a poisoned cup of coffee in 1986 - to set up a complicated web of banking and insurance interests.
Many paths were smoothed, the informants said, by his membership of the lodge led by Gelli, currently serving 12 years for the Ambrosiano collapse.
Prosecutors claimed Calvi was forced into a corner by his exposure to the Vatican Bank, led by the since-dismissed American cardinal, Paul Marcinkus.
