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To: long-gone who wrote (84362)	4/11/2002 5:16:37 PM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116984

The Times (London) March 28, 2002, Thursday Judge bans film linking Italian to London 'suicide' Richard Owen in Rome A JUDGE in Rome ordered that a controversial film about the mysterious death of a Vatican-linked banker be withdrawn from cinemas across Italy yesterday after a complaint by a businessman with alleged Mafia links that it damages his reputation and honour. The film, I Banchieri di Dio (God's Bankers), which opened on March 8 and has been playing to packed houses, deals with the death of Roberto Calvi, the head of the Banco Ambrosiano, who was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge, in 1982 with his pockets weighed down with stones. The film, directed by Giuseppe Ferrara, stars Omero Antonutti as Calvi and Rutger Hauer as Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the head of the Vatican Bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, which was closely linked to the Banco Ambrosiano. Calvi was found dead after he resigned as head of the bank, which crashed with huge debts in a murky financial scandal. In 1997 arrest warrants were issued for a number of alleged mafiosi and Mafia-linked figures, including Flavio Carboni, a businessman police said was "intimately involved" in the scandal. Signor Carboni, played in the film by Giancarlo Giannini, who starred with Sir Anthony Hopkins in Hannibal, has not yet been brought to trial. The judge, Marzia Cruciani, said that she agreed with Signor Carboni that the film attributed to him a central role in Calvi's "tragic demise". She said that she had ordered Signor Carboni to lodge 1.5 million (Pounds 920,000) with the court while the film was taken off the screens. The judge explained that if it was eventually shown that Signor Carboni did play such a central role in the Calvi affair and was convicted, the money deposited would be used to compensate the film-makers. Magistrates said that the trial had not taken place because investigators were still seeking evidence on the death of Calvi, whose body has been exhumed for forensic tests. I Banchieri di Dio is based partly on a series of judicial inquiries into the Calvi affair over the past 20 years and partly on the testimony of Calvi's son Carlo, who now lives in Montreal. Carlo Calvi maintains that his father did not commit suicide, as a London coroner concluded at the time, but was murdered by the Mafia, partly because he owed them "huge sums of money" but also because he knew too much about alleged links between Mafia-connected financiers and the Vatican. Signor Ferrara protested that Italy was "a country of censorship...this ruling is strangling freedom of expression". He added: "I am ashamed to be an Italian citizen. I did not realise things had got so bad here". The director said that he had worked on the film for 15 years and had taken "enormous pains to get the details right". The film, half documentary and half drama, maintains that Signor Carboni was instrumental in luring Calvi to London but does not suggest that he committed the murder or had any direct part in it. "I paint him as an ambiguous character," Signor Ferrara said. He said that he was being punished for drawing attention to "the links between the business world, the Mafia, secret masonic lodges and the secret services". The film has also caused offence in the Vatican, partly because it portrays the Pope, always shown from behind, as directly involved in seamy financial dealings and also because Archbishop Marcinkus is shown as a cynical and foul-mouthed, manipulative figure. Enzo Gallo, the film's producer, said that he would appeal against the ruling. The financial damage would be enormous, he said. The film had taken Pounds 250,000 in the three weeks since its release. vaticanbankclaims.com