Philip Willen (5:59)

Closer to knowing how Roberto Calvi came.

Nicolo Minoni (6:01)

To be found hanging here. People with method and motives so long it appears that his murderers may never be brought to book. There was one important conclusion here. In his ruling, the judge wrote, this definitely was murder, not a desperate suicide. And he believed the Mafia, the Masons, the Vatican, the spies were all still suspects. But he wrote, too much of the evidence was speculative or tangential to convict any of the defendants. Listening back, it felt like a horrible game of Clue, where you have the suspects, the murder weapon, the means, and the motive. Yet no one goes to jail. After all these years of reporting, I wasn't sure whether to dive back into the evidence. One more time or just give up. And then I realized I'd missed a key clue from the very beginning of my reporting, something that just might tie all these loose threads together. From Crooked Media and Campsite Media, this is Shadow Kingdom, God's Banker. I'm your host, Niccolo Minoni, and this is our final episode. The Train Station the violent explosion ripped apart Bologna's main train station, leaving tons of rubble and an unknown number of bodies trapped beneath. This show is sponsored by BetterHelp. Traditional in person therapy can cost anywhere from 100 to $250 per session, which adds up. But with BetterHelp online therapy, you can save on average up to 50% per session. With BetterHelp, what you do is you pay a flat fee for weekly sessions, which ends up saving you big on cost and on time. Therapy should feel accessible. It shouldn't feel like a luxury. With online therapy, you get quality care at a price that makes sense and can help you with anything from anxiety to everyday stress. Your mental health is worth it, and now it's within reach. With over 30,000 therapists, BetterHelp is the world's largest online therapy platform, having served over 5 million people globally. It's also super convenient. You can join a session with the click of a button, helping you fit therapy into your busy life. Plus, and this is key, you can switch therapists at any time. Your well being is worth it. Visit betterhelp.com kingdom to get 10% off your first month. That's betterhelp. H E L p dot com at Capella University, you can learn at your own pace with our flexpath learning format. Take one or two courses at a time and complete as many as you can in a 12 week billing session. With Flexpath, you can even finish the bachelor's degree you started in 22 months for $20,000. A different future is closer than you think with Capella University. Learn more at Capella Eduardo fastest 25% of students. Cost varies by pace, transfer credits and other factors. Fees apply. Carlo Calvi is Roberto Calvi's son. He worked brief stints for his dad and was just 29 when his father died. This is Carlo Testifying at that 2005 murder trial.

Philip Willen (9:54)

Montreal in Canada.

Nicolo Minoni (9:59)

I was especially interested in what Carlo had to say because I desperately wanted to interview him for the podcast. And the truth is that I already interviewed Carlo, kind of. After talking with my friend Mario, who first suggested I look into the story. Carlo was actually the first person I reached out to. He was easy enough to track down. Neither of us were ready to do a formal interview. But we talked for hours and I recorded my side of the conversation. And Carlo agreed to lay out his father's story so that I could investigate it in more depth. He liked that I was a lawyer and kept saying things like, and of course, as a lawyer, you know this. We were speaking in Italian and he was going 1,000 miles an hour. I kept trying to get him to tell me about what his dad was like. I was looking for personal vignettes, some way to understand Calvi on a deeper emotional level. But instead, most of what Carlo wanted to talk about were these really, really down the rabbit hole theories of the case. I'd ask him a question and he'd go, oh, that's simple. And then he'd launch into esoteric connections between far right antiques dealers and wire transfers and terrorist bombings. None of it seemed to be an answer to the question I just posed to him. I could see as I spoke to him that his whole life had been, in some sense, about unlocking the mysterious death of his father. So my simplistic questions about how painful it must have been or what his dad was like, he almost didn't even hear them. At the end of the conversation, I asked to speak to him again, and he smiled and nodded. I knew I'd need many, many more chats because this one had made no sense to me. But that was okay, he agreed. I went off to do my research to learn the ABCs of the story. But when I came back to Carlo, no response. Emails, calls, LinkedIn, you name it, he wouldn't answer. Like so much of this story, he disappeared. And all he left me with were notes from a frantic three hour conversation that made no sense to me. That is, until I revisited the 2005 trial. Many hours into Carlo's testimony, I stumbled on something to set the scene. Carlo's on the witness stand and one of the defense lawyers was firing questions at him pretty intensely. Jelly. Jelly. You hear that name mentioned a few times between the lawyer and Carlos? That's Li Cho Jelli, the grandmaster of the far right P2 Masons. Carlo testified that his dad's plan was to come back from London and reveal the names of the people he'd been working with, presumably on various illegal schemes. Which is why this lawyer was pressing Carlo. Tell us who these shadowy associates are, he thundered. So Carlo said, jelly, of course, of course, jelly. But the attorney wanted more. Give us more names. And then it's right here, at this moment, that Carlo adds another name, almost under his breath. Marco Ceruti. I was so surprised I had to rewind and listen again. Cerutti was a big threat. Carlo alleged. He said Marco Ceruti received money. But that was it. Blink and you'd miss it. The trial barreled on, never to return to Ceruti. But not me. I was fixated on that money and why Calvi's son would offer this name with a metaphorical gun to his head. I racked my brain trying to remember if I'd ever heard that name before. I dug up my notes for my conversation with Carlo and sure enough, there it was. Marco Ceruti. About how he got money from the Calvi's Ambrosiano bank. How Cerrutti was allegedly connected to organized crime in London. Maybe terrorism. Carlo told me, look into Ceruti's wire transfers. Ceruti was moving really big amounts of money. But Carlo told me so many things in that conversation, it was completely buried. Now, with two years of reporting behind me, I could sense the outline of something significant. Where before I'd honestly just seen chaos. But since Carlo still wasn't responding to my messages, I needed to find a guide to help me crack this code. So I turned to a man who had already rescued me once. The man who'd entrusted me with the Rozone tapes and the tapes of Calvi's inner circle. The modern day expert on Calvi, Philip Willen. He's interviewed Carlo multiple times. And he knew all about Marco Ceruti.

Philip Willen (15:54)

Trouti was a kind of fixer and assistant to Geli over a number of years.

Nicolo Minoni (16:01)

Remember, Celli wanted to bring fascism back to Italy in the 70s and 80s. Pitou was trying to launch a coup to take over the country. One of Italy's most wanted fugitives has been arrested in Switzerland. Licio Jelli was the head of a secret organization called P2. Accused of creating a state within the Italian state. Jelly was arrested trying to pick up money in a Geneva bank. He is wanted in Italy for political espionage and possession of state secrets. He's also been implicated in the scandal involving the Vatican Bank. When Jelly was finally arrested in 1982, he was carrying a document. A document that was mysteriously buried in his case file for a long time. It was only officially unearthed by Italian courts as I started reporting on the Calvi affair. The document shows that in the weeks surrounding a horrific terrorist attack, a bombing at a train station in Bologna, Jelly sent over $11 million to Marco Ceruti. The title of the makeshift accounting document was Bologna.

Philip Willen (17:09)

The suspicion is that Cerutty may have been the person who actually passed on the money directly to the bombers.

Nicolo Minoni (17:19)

Willen is pretty matter of fact here, so let me just tell you that this is a stunning allegation. Putting my lawyer hat on for a moment. This was never proven in court. And through his lawyer, Ceruti has admitted that he received millions from Jelly, but claims they were for antiques. But Carlo's theory is that Jelly used Cerruti to pay terrorists to set off a bomb in bologna that killed 87 people. It's still considered one of the worst acts of terrorism in European history. The violent explosion ripped apart Bologna's main train station, leaving tons of rubble and an unknown number of bodies trapped beneath. It's hard to grasp how truly awful this attack was. Was the bomb exploded in the station in the middle of summer with families preparing for vacation. Stonework crashed down like a disaster movie, crushing and injuring hundreds, even decades removed. Watching videos of the rescue effort is really hard. Officials involved in the rescue effort claim they do not yet know the cause. However, a right wing extremist group. Carlo and Willen think that Calvi had a copy of the multi million dollar wire transfer. Because Calvi was Liccio Jelly's banker.

Philip Willen (18:42)

The sensitive documents that Calvi carried around with him in a briefcase could have related to the Bologna bombing. And it's possible that he realized that some of that money that sort of flowed out from the coffers that he was in charge of had gone to financing the Bologna station bombing and possibly other terrorist activities. My idea would be that he was possibly unwitting about all of that when he came to understand it. And he was desperate to recover the money to prop up the bank and avoid bankruptcy.

Nicolo Minoni (19:27)

This was exactly the kind of information Calvi was hoping to leverage to save his bank and himself. If Grandmaster Jelly paid for the Bologna train bombing, then maybe Calvi found out about these payments because they passed through his own Banco Ambrosiano. And maybe with this incendiary piece of news, Calvi tried to blackmail P2. And that may have been the straw that broke the camel's back.

Philip Willen (19:58)

The prosecutors in the murder trial, the Calvin murder trial, were very clear that they felt that the motive for his murder was the blackmail that he was conducting at the end of his career to try and save the bank.

Nicolo Minoni (20:14)

Even so, it still felt a bit speculative. But then Willem told me one very important detail. Bologna bombing investigators filed paperwork looking for Calvi the day he fled Italy.

Philip Willen (20:30)

The fact that that really alarmed him fits into the idea that he knew there was a dangerous connection there for him, and therefore he panics and he knows he's got to run.

Nicolo Minoni (20:43)

The Bologna investigation coincided perfectly with Calvi's escape. I was shocked I hadn't heard about this sooner, but it had been considered a fringe theory by prosecutors up until very recently, when Jelly's documents were rediscovered. Once I understood the Bologna theory, though, a lot of the story started to fit into place.

Philip Willen (21:04)

Geli could well have organized an operation where people kind of cluster around Calvin, say, look, your life is in danger. You've got to get out of the country. We'll help you. Go to, initially Switzerland, and then change their minds, and then go to London, and, you know, we'll take care of things for you.

Nicolo Minoni (21:25)

Plus, Carboni, the fixer, the man who planned Calvi's final trip, was a known associate of the Mafia. Carboni had also been outed by Mafia operatives, of all people, as a close associate of Jelly and Jelly's crooked financial deals. So if Calvi was threatening to blackmail P2 with documents about the Bologna bombing, it would then have made sense for Carboni to shuffle Calvi out of the country and take his briefcase. The theory about the Bologna bombing would tie all these disparate threads together. All these brief red strings on my conspiracy corkboard now converged around the P2 Masons over Grandmaster Jelly as the ultimate reason why Calvi was murdered. To top it all off, Willen confronted Jelly about Bologna on the record, before he died, you showed him the piece of paper where all of that is laid bare.

Philip Willen (22:32)

Yes. His reaction, I think, would tend to confirm suspicions that there was something nasty and dangerous underlying it.

Nicolo Minoni (22:41)

For him, that's after the break. Shadow Kingdom is brought to you by Lumen. Did you know that when your metabolism is working properly, you feel the benefits in literally every other aspect of your life? I have found a valuable tool, a very valuable tool here, that gives me insights into how to create a healthy metabolism for my body. It is called Lumen. Lumen is the world's first handheld metabolic coach, which is a very fancy way of saying that it's a thing that measures your metabolism when you blow into a device. There's a connected app, of course, and it lets you know if you're burning fat or carbs, which is an important thing. And based on that dichotomy, it'll give you a tailored piece of guidance into how to improve your nutrition, your workout, sleep, even stress management, which I'm sure we're all perfectly stressed. So all you have to do, again, is to breathe into your Lumen first thing in the morning and you'll know what's going on with your metabolism, whether you're burning mostly fats or mostly carbs. And if you don't know what that means, I certainly didn't. Basically, when you're burning one versus the other, it can really help you understand why you're feeling sluggish, why you crash midday. It's in large part based on this burning either fats or carbs. So do that. And then Lumen will give you a personalized nutrition plan for that day based on those measurements. So if it's not clear thus far, your metabolism is your body's engine. It's how your body turns the food that you eat into the fuel that keeps you going. So the warmer months are coming. Spring back into your health and fitness. Go to Lumen Me Kingdom to get 15% off your Lumen, that is L U M E N Me Kingdom for 15% off your purchase. Thank you to our friends at Lumen for sponsoring this episode. Ladies, you'll end up shopping for your guys deodorant, right? So try Degree's Original Cool Rush. You see, last year Degree changed the formula and men were mad. One guy even started a petition so Degree admitted they messed up and brought the original Cool Rush scent back. It's clean, crisp and actually smells like someone you want to cuddle. And it's in Walmart, Target and other stores now for under $4. So toss one in your cart and find out why it's the best selling men's antiperspirant for the last decade. Degree Cool Rush is back and it smells like Victory. Philip Willen had actually interviewed P2 Grandmaster Liccio Jelly multiple times before Gelli's death in 2015.

Philip Willen (25:23)

It was quite a kind of nerve wracking experience to speak to this man who had a reputation of being the puppet master who'd pulled the strings behind many very terrible events in Italian history.

Nicolo Minoni (25:39)

At first the Grandmaster was pretty cagey with Willin, but after years of speaking together, he opened up. Willem gave me recordings of interviews where he'd ask the Grandmaster about the mafia, politics, dirty banking, whatever he could find evidence on. At one point, Jeff Jelly vaguely suggests that the US government supported P2's anti communist efforts. And when Philip Whillan found the bank transfer information possibly allegedly showing Jelly's involvement in funding the Bologna bombing, he took his chance to ask Jelly about it.

Philip Willen (26:27)

I took the photocopy of the document to show him and he said his lawyers had told him not to talk about it and clearly he knew exactly what it was.

Nicolo Minoni (26:41)

Willen has video of this exchange. Jelly took the quickest glance at the document Willen showed him, seemed to recognize what it was, and quickly looked away, refusing to engage. This is the only time I could find that Jelly was ever asked about this document. In earlier interviews with Willen, Jelly had no qualms about lying about other documents and sketchy bank transfers. He was happy to throw other people under the bus, especially as he got older and bored. But this covert receipt, Jelly would barely look at it. He wouldn't touch it, and he didn't even try to provide an excuse for what it could be. According to Willen, Jelly said his lawyers told him not to talk about the document. Also, in the same interview, Willin pressed Jelly about Marco Ceruti, who handled the money. And the grandmaster became more suspicious. He said he not only knew Ceruti, he was a friend and a member of P2. And when Willen asked about Trudy's name being on the Bologna document, he said.

Philip Willen (27:55)

That Ceruti was not in Italy and he wouldn't be coming back.

Nicolo Minoni (28:00)

What did you make of that?

Philip Willen (28:03)

Yes. I mean, it was an indication that, you know, Cell knew immediately who we were talking about. He knew where he was, which not very many people did. And, you know, I thought, given the suspicions around the document and around Celi and around Cerutti, to say, immediately he won't be coming back to Italy is, you know, a very significant response.

Nicolo Minoni (28:38)

Lito Jelli died several years ago, as did Carboni. Same with Calvi's underlings, his wife and his Vatican counterparts. Cerutti was called to testify about P2, but he fled to Brazil. I've tried countless ways to get in touch with him. No response. As Nicolo, the lawyer, I will say Cerutti has denied any wrongdoing. And there's no outstanding charge or conviction of a crime in connection with that money. So this is where the trail ends for me. At the answering machine of Marco Ceruti, where years of interviews and collected evidence have led me. A point where the asphalt road dissolves into dirt. But deep in those conspiratorial back roads, I see the picture emerge. A picture sketched by Carlo and the Bologna theory, that Calvi's murder was organized by P2, by Liscio Gelli and his men, because Pichu was worried about how much Calvi knew about the bombing and their involvement. Quite literally, he may have had the receipts. And since Calvi was facing his own legal troubles, Jelly worried that he would tell police what he knew. And that he'd give the Grandmaster up to save himself. Jelly may have gotten help from or worked in concert with the Mafia to bring Calvi down. But regardless, the Bologna massacre was the tipping point, the reason Calvi was murdered. One more murder to cover up dozens of others.

Philip Willen (30:17)

Check, check, check.

Nicolo Minoni (30:18)

Levels one, one, two. Check, check, check. Mario, what are you looking for? As I finish this story, I still felt a lot of frustration, a lot of uncertainty. I left my job and I set out searching for something far more concrete than what I'd found. So I returned to where this all started, with my friend Mario. It's funny, because we are right back in the apartment where you first told me about the story. I realize now, two plus years ago, when you told me that story about Carlo in 1982, and I had come over with this new recorder, I didn't know quite how to use it, and I said, maybe I'll record Mario telling the story.

Mario Platero (31:03)

Well, it's good that it came to an end, and it must have been quite an interesting and long journey. In the end.

Nicolo Minoni (31:09)

It was. It was less. Less predictable than I had thought. It took me. I told Mario about Vincenzo Calcara, the Mafioso, scaring the shit out of me. I described Frank Pacienza smoking a pipe as he told me about the Vatican espionage meeting Vitor, the smuggler on the coast of Trieste, trying to trace the billions of dollars Calvi had borrowed and never repaid. We talked about the Fascist Freemasons and the Cold War and Carlo Calvi's Bologna theory. I tried to process all these threads with Mario in real time, because if you'd asked me two years ago, I would have said these were all just rumors and stories, they were all silly and absurd, that clearly there was some more straightforward, reasonable story behind Calvi's death. Yet here I was telling him, Mario, the quote, unquote spy. About this web of shady characters, the nexus of power and money that orbited Calvi. And what was astounding to me was how much of that was happening at the same time, behind the scenes, the fervor and the violence and the organized crime. On another side, you talked to me about the term dietrologia. You introduced me to that.

Mario Platero (32:30)

Yes, behindology, which is the theory of what's behind something. And you don't have proofs. You can only use your imagination. And your imagination can carry you very far in thinking, what's behind that? Why did they do that? Was there a conspiracy of people that decided to kill Calvi? This was the perfect example. I mean, you know, nobody knew why he was killed or why he was dead. But there were all these dealings with the Vatican and with the Pitu and Calvi and the Pope and Solidar Nos, and, you know, there was a whole thing that, you know, so people had to be imaginative and, you know, they didn't come to an answer.

Nicolo Minoni (33:17)

You said dietrolgia gives you an answer when you can't have one. I like that.

Mario Platero (33:21)

It tries to give you an answer. Yes, tries to give you an answer. And many people believe it.

Nicolo Minoni (33:29)

I doubt that the 2005 defendants were actually Calvi's murderers. I do believe in the Bologna theory. I believe that there was some kind of neo fascist plot to kill Calvi. But like Mario said, we don't know for certain. There's only enough evidence to get imaginative. What I realized as we talked was that this story, Calvi's story, had filled me with a surprising amount of compassion, a little bit for Roberto Calvi, who. Who was caught up by forces far greater than himself. But mostly it gives me compassion for the average Italians that live through the heyday of dietrologia, people like my parents, who came of age in the 60s and 70s. During that time, the Mafia, the Vatican, spies, Da Vinci Code style masons, they all did exist in Italy. Sure, they may have sounded like conspiracies, but they were real. Italy was a surprisingly violent place where the Mafia regularly kidnapped people for ransom, where the fight for and against communism wasn't abstract, it was bloody and in the streets, where maybe you knew secret societies existed, but not which of your friends or neighbors had signed up. And remember, the state controlled much of the Italian economy. That was true all the way into the 90s. So there often was some hidden backstory, some reason why that executive friendly with that politician got that job. Given that context, Mario told me, in a way, teatrologia made sense.

Mario Platero (35:14)

So there were many things that happened in Italian history that created a situation that was a little bit opaque, if you see what I mean. And therefore, people like to, you know, to conjecture, you know, to make assumptions or hypothesis, and that is what is an actual science of dietrologia. But then it sort of took a life of its own. So it was applied to everything and everywhere.

Nicolo Minoni (35:41)

Yeah, but it helps me understand Italian stuff a little better today, I guess, is what I'm saying, if that makes sense. Not so much that I validate the process of the Trilogia now, but it helps me understand people of my, let's say, my father's generation, because they grew up in a world where 40% of the trilogia was not theatrologia. It was just davant theologia. It was true. And that's kind of interesting. I didn't expect that to happen. And that's been very helpful to me. When stories that seem fantastical turn out to be true, it has a deep psychic impact on people. You start looking at other wild stories and wondering, could they also be true? I have to say this story has helped. I always am afraid, as an Italian abroad, that Italians are too bombastic, not tied, in fact. So I always try to overcorrect because Italians are seen as unreliable, kind of operatic. Learning about this story, it's helped me see a lot of, you know, Italy in the time you're describing was not to be dramatic. It was a little bit of a war zone. I mean, there were bombs on trains. There were. They were called the Years of Lead.

Mario Platero (36:58)

Yeah, it was a very, very particular situation. And Italy was a democracy. It was a fragile democracy. The fear that communists would come in was there. And there were things that were happening in secret. This is the atmosphere in which we lived. We just recently had a high school reunion. And it turned out that one of our schoolmates in the class was with us in the class for many years, had been arrested for the Dozier kidnapping. General Dozier. It was an American general. General Dozier had been kidnapped by the Red Brigades. So it was pervasive. It was everywhere.

Nicolo Minoni (37:44)

This far left Marxist terrorist group kidnapped an American general in Italy in 1981 and held him captive for over a month. It was a huge story. But Mario just found out. He went to high school with one of the alleged kidnappers. The point is, given the amount of violence in Italy at the time, personal connections like these were pretty common.

Mario Platero (38:08)

So it's everywhere, it's anywhere it changes. But human nature is always such that will try to find an answer to something that is inexplicable. And that was the atmosphere in which we were living back then.

Nicolo Minoni (38:32)

Living in that world was exhausting. But I understand the eterologia better now. It's an attempt to make sense of the world. A world where we always have all the information. A world where our search for answers can lead us to some very strange places. Sometimes the conspiracy theories stay theories unproven or even disproved. But sometimes when you peer behind the curtain, those stories, they end up being true. A question from my producer, Joe. What story should I do next?

Mario Platero (39:20)

It's up to you. You know, there are other interesting stories. This one for example could be an interesting one. A union case of a union leader that had been murdered somewhere years before in America Rica.

Nicolo Minoni (39:38)

Shadow Kingdom is a production of Crooked Media and Campside Media. It's hosted and reported by me, Nicolo Magnoni, with additional reporting by Simona Zekchi and Joe Hawthorne. The show is written by Joe Hawthorne, Ashley Ann Krigbaum and me. Joe Hawthorne is our lead producer and Ashley Ann Krigbaum is our Managing producer. Tracy Samuelson is our story editor, Sound Design, Design, mix and mastering by Mark McAdam. Our theme song and original score are composed by me and Mark McAdam. Our studio engineer is Ewan Lai Trimuin. Voice acting by Bonnie Biagini, Andrea Bianchi, Ferrante Cosma, Luca de Gennaro, Michele Teodori and Mustafa Zialan. Field recording by Justin Trieger, Jonathan Centi, Pete Schev, Jonathan Gruber and Joanna Broder. Fact Checking by Zoe Sullivan Our Our executive producers are me, Nicola Minoni along with Sarah Geismer, Katie Long and Alison Falsetta from Crooked Media. Josh Dean, Adam Hoff, Matt Sher and Vanessa Gregoriadis are the executive producers at Campside Media. We had additional help from Doug Slaywin, Ashley Warren, Johnny Kaufman and Anthony Puchillo. Thanks to Philip Willin for talking with me over these many years and answering my many questions. His book the Vatican at War was especially helpful when researching this series. Thank you to all the people that spoke with me for this story, especially Mario Platero, Grazia Mario and finally, a special personal thanks from me to Jon Favreau, Strauss Zelnick, Matt Lieber, Alex Bloomberg, Avery Trufelman and always and forever to George Walbeck. 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.