God’s Banker I 5. The Fixers

Crooked Minis

Crooked Media

Documentary, History, True Crime, Society & Culture

4.7 • 4K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2025

⏱️ 32 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Calvi is arrested on a banking technicality, but after his release, he becomes paranoid. When his deputy is shot in the street, Nicolo uncovers secret tapes revealing Calvi’s mounting fear. The Bank of Italy finds a $1.2 billion hole in Calvi’s accounts—money meant for the Vatican, the Mafia, and P2. Now, it's gone. Friends of the Pod get early access to the entire first season of Shadow Kingdom: God's Banker before it drops for everyone else—ads included. Get early access to the full season now by joining Crooked’s Friends of the Pod at crooked.com/friends. Hear this episode in Italian by subscribing to Il Banchiere di Dio wherever you get your podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Friends of the Pod subscribers can listen to the full season of Shadow Kingdom right now.
0:05.5	Join Friends of the Pod at crooked.com slash friends or on Apple Podcasts.
0:15.0	Campsite Media.
0:24.6	In the middle of a hot summer night in 1981, Roberto Calvi sat in a prison cell and began to cry.
0:28.6	He'd been arrested just a week after the assassination attempt on John Paul II,
0:34.6	and it spent two months wasting away in his cell.
0:39.4	Calvi's stubble was beginning to show.
0:42.1	His eyes were red from lack of sleep.
0:45.1	His beige prison jumpsuit stunk of B.O.
0:49.4	Calvi had been stripped of his designer clothes right down to his shoelaces,
0:53.5	and he hadn't had a good night
0:54.6	sleep in months. His cellmates would play cards, and they'd listen to music all night,
1:00.2	keeping him from sleeping. Calvi was charged with breaking currency export laws. Basically, Italy wanted to
1:07.9	protect his economy by forcing people to keep their money in the country.
1:12.0	Yeah, it's illegal to export a certain amount of capital abroad in Italy.
1:20.6	I asked Francesco Pazienza, the former spy who worked for Calvi, about Calvi's arrest. And he said what I heard from
1:29.4	lots of people, which is, everybody ignored this law. To be clear, Calvi was up to a bunch of financial
1:38.0	shenanigans. But it's also pretty normal for bankers to work internationally, sending cash outside of their country.
1:47.0	So arresting Calvi for this kind of felt like arresting a pedestrian for jaywalking.
1:53.7	It seemed like prosecutors were going after Calvi to send a political message.
1:58.5	Some reporters claimed this was a left-wing vendetta against Calvi.
2:03.0	Others suggested that prosecutors wanted to send a message to tax sheets,
	...

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