Italian prosecutors on Wednesday said they would be looking for life terms for four people charged with the murder of 'God's Banker' Roberto Calvi, found hanging from Blackfriars' Bridge in London 23 years ago.
The four people charged with premeditated murder are jailed Mafia boss Pippo Calo', Sardinian wheeler-dealer Flavio Carboni, Rome crime boss Ernesto Diotallevi and smuggler Silvano Victor.
A fifth defendant, Carboni's former girlfriend Manuela Kleinszig, would no longer be facing charges, prosecutor Luca Tescaroli said.
Calvi was 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 he is now thought to have been murdered in revenge for not paying back laundered money to the Mafia.
Prosecutors claim 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 have dismissed these 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 allegedly smoothed by his membership of the lodge led by Gelli, currently serving 12 years for the Ambrosiano collapse.
Prosecutors believe Calvi was forced into a corner by his exposure to the Vatican Bank, led by the since-dismissed American cardinal, Paul Marcinkus.
