Rome court reopens Vatican Bank row

By Viyiane Hewitt In Rome
THE Vatican was prepared to pay some £500,000 for an Italian banker's secret papers which it feared would seriously implicate the Church in a 1982 financial scandal, according to new police evidence revealed this week in Rome. As a result of the new disclosures about the Vatican Bank, a senior Czech bishop and several financiers are facing fraud charges.
Roberto Calvi, president of the Milan-based Banco Ambrosiano who was found hanging dead under London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982, contained details of considerble sums paid by the Italian bank before Calvi's death as a favour to the Vatican into the account of the Polish trade union Solidarity. The Banco Ambrosiano collapsed in 1982 with debts of £900 million. Police investigators in Rome now believe that Calvi had planned to use details of the payment he had made to Solidarity to pressurise the Vatican Bank into bailing our the failing Banco Ambrosiano at the eleventh hour.
Rome judges and police have re-opened inquiries into Calvi's last days, and fear that details of the contentious Solidarity donations may have been contained in Calvi's briefcase which went missing at the time of his death in London, days after the collapse of his financial empire. If the papers do turn up, the Vatican could find itself liable, financial observers believe, for a large part of the debt of the Ambrosiano since the missing documents may contain alleged "letters of guarantee" given by the Vatican Bank to Calvi.
Last Friday Rome judge Mario Almerighi ordered that three arrest warrants and a court summons be issued after a Rome businessman had claimed in statements to the police that Vatican representatives had employed him to help find the missing papers. Giulio Lena told police that when commissioned to carry out this search for the Vatican he had received two cheques for just under £300,000 each, drawn on a Vatican Bank account belonging to Czech Bishop Paley I Inilica of a religious association which aids eastern bloc refugees. Lena had told police that he then contacted Flavio Cardoni, Calvi's right hand man at the Banco Ambrosiano believed to have been the last person to see the banker alive in London. Carboni was arrested in Rome on Friday, and Judge Almerighi issued three further warrants for Bishop Hnilica, Lena and an unknown person. All face fraud charges.
The warrant for Carboni reads: "Carboni, induced by Hnilica who was acting in the interests of the Vatican state . . . acquired a bag, or mediated to have it acquired by a person unknown, containing documents of considerable value belonging to Roberto Calvi . . ."
Interrogation of Carboni and Lena is believed to be going on in Rome at this moment. It is not known whether the arrest warrant will be served on Romebased Bishop Hnilica. The Czech prelate told the court that he was "totally extraneous" to the new charges being brought in the long running saga of the Vatican Bank and the Banco Ambrosiano collapse. He contended that the two blank cheques signed by him and later given to Lena were "used abusively by persons unknown and filled in with astronomical sums for illicit purposes". Ile added that he had reported the loss of the cheques.
Also extraneous to the charges are the Vatican and the Vatican Bank, he stressed.
On his arrest Carboni had accused Giulio I cna to police of "blackmailing" the Vatican over Calvi's missing papers. Carboni said that Lena had been writing and telephoning threats to members of the Vatican hierarchy trying to get them to pay him money for his silence in the matter of the papers.