Giuseppe Calò
Encyclopedia
Giuseppe 'Pippo' Calò is a member of the Sicilian
Mafia
. He was referred to as the "Mafia's Cashier" because he was heavily involved in the financial side of organized crime, primarily money laundering
.
, the capital of Sicily, he was inducted into the Porta Nuova Mafia Family at the age of twenty-three after carrying out a murder to avenge his father. By 1969 he was the boss of Porta Nuova, and amongst his men was the future informant (pentito
) Tommaso Buscetta
. Calò was on the Sicilian Mafia Commission
, a group of the most powerful Mafia bosses in Sicily who regularly met, supposedly to iron out differences and solve disputes.
In the beginning of the 1970s Calò moved to Rome. Under the guise of an antiques dealer and under the false identity of Mario Agliarolo he invested in real estate and laundered large proceeds of crime for many Mafia families. He was able to establish close links with common criminals of the Banda della Magliana
, neo-fascist groups and members of the Italian intelligence agencies.
During the early 1980s he supported Salvatore Riina
and the Corleonesi
during the Second Mafia War
that decimated the rival Mafia families.
Calò arranged the bombing of the 904 express train
between Florence and Bologna on December 23, 1984 that killed 16 people and injured around 200 others. It was meant to divert attention from the revelations given by various Mafia informants, including Buscetta. Calò and his men had joined up with neo-fascist terrorists and the Camorra
to carry out the atrocity.
After several years as a fugitive, Calò was arrested on March 30, 1985, in a villa at Poggio San Lorenzo
, in the province of Rieti
, together with Antonio Rotolo
, one of the Mafia's heroin movers. He was one of the hundreds of defendants at the Maxi Trial
that started the following year, where he was charged with Mafia association, money laundering and the Naples train bombing. He cross-examined
Tommaso Buscetta himself and the pair, who had previously been lifelong friends, engaged in a vicious round of mud-slinging and insults as they attempted to discredit each other.
At the end of the Maxi Trial in 1987 Calò was found guilty and given two life sentences. Anti-Mafia prosecutors and investigators were outraged when it was discovered in 1989 that Calò and a number of other convicted Mafia bosses were living a life of relative luxury in their own section of the prison hospital, being waited on by common criminals and having their food brought in from the outside. Calò was supposedly suffering from asthma
but he showed no symptoms. The anti-Mafia judges forced Calò and his fellow Mafiosi back to their cells. He was substituted by Salvatore Cancemi
as capo mandamento of the Puorta Nova family.
(a mafioso turned informer) Francesco Marino Mannoia
claimed that Roberto Calvi
– nicknamed "God's banker" because he was in charge of Banco Ambrosiano
, in which the Vatican Bank
was the main share-holder – had been killed in 1982 because he had lost Mafia funds when the Banco Ambrosiano collapsed. According to Mannoia the killer was Francesco Di Carlo
, a mafioso living in London at the time, and the order to kill Calvi had come from Calò and Licio Gelli
, the head of the secret Italian masonic lodge Propaganda Due
(P2). When Di Carlo became an informer in June 1996, he denied that he was the killer, but admitted that he had been approached by Calò to do the job. However, Di Carlo could not be reached in time, and when he later called Calò, the latter said that everything had been taken care of already.
In 1997, Italian
prosecutors in Rome
implicated Calò in Calvi's murder, along with Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian businessman with wide ranging interests, as well as Ernesto Diotallevi (one of the leaders of the Banda della Magliana
, a Roman Mafia-like organization) and Di Carlo.
In July 2003, the prosecution concluded that the Mafia acted not only in its own interests, but also to ensure that Calvi could not blackmail "politico-institutional figures and [representatives] of freemasonry, the P2 lodge, and the IOR
with whom he had invested substantial sums of money, some of it from Cosa Nostra and Italian public corporations". The trial finally began in October 2005.
In March 2007, prosecutor Luca Tescaroli requested life sentences for the already convicted Pippo Calò, Flavio Carboni, Ernesto Diotallevi and Calvi's bodyguard Silvano Vittor. All of them deny involvement. Tescaroli began his conclusions by saying Calvi was killed "to punish him for taking large quantities of money from criminal organisations and especially the Mafia organisation known as the 'Cosa Nostra'."
On June 6, 2007, Calò and his co-defendants were cleared of murdering Calvi. The presiding judge in the trial threw out the charges because of "insufficient evidence" in a surprise verdict after 20 months of evidence. Calò, who gave evidence from his high security prison, denied the charges. "I had no interest in killing Calvi," he said. "I didn't have the time, nor the inclination. Besides, if I had wanted him dead do you not think I would have picked my own people to do the job?" Calò's defence argued there were others who had wanted Calvi silenced.
, Pippo Calò declared he dissociated from Cosa Nostra. In an extraordinary statement he admitted Cosa Nostra existed and that he had been part of its Commission
– breaking the law of silence or omertà
.
However, he did not become a pentito
– government witness – and refused to testify against his fellow mafiosi. Calò said he was prepared to face his own responsibility but would not name others. “I am a mafioso but I don’t want to be accused of bloodbaths,” he said.
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
Mafia
Mafia
The Mafia is a criminal syndicate that emerged in the mid-nineteenth century in Sicily, Italy. It is a loose association of criminal groups that share a common organizational structure and code of conduct, and whose common enterprise is protection racketeering...
. He was referred to as the "Mafia's Cashier" because he was heavily involved in the financial side of organized crime, primarily money laundering
Money laundering
Money laundering is the process of disguising illegal sources of money so that it looks like it came from legal sources. The methods by which money may be laundered are varied and can range in sophistication. Many regulatory and governmental authorities quote estimates each year for the amount...
.
Boss of the Porta Nuova Mafia family
Born and raised in PalermoPalermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
, the capital of Sicily, he was inducted into the Porta Nuova Mafia Family at the age of twenty-three after carrying out a murder to avenge his father. By 1969 he was the boss of Porta Nuova, and amongst his men was the future informant (pentito
Pentito
Pentito designates people in Italy who, formerly part of criminal or terrorist organizations, following their arrests decide to "repent" and collaborate with the judicial system to help investigations...
) Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta
Tommaso Buscetta was a Sicilian mafioso. Although he was not the first pentito in the Italian witness protection program, he is widely recognized as the first important one breaking omertà...
. Calò was on the Sicilian Mafia Commission
Sicilian Mafia Commission
The Sicilian Mafia Commission, known as Commissione or Cupola, is a body of leading Mafia members to decide on important questions concerning the actions of, and settling disputes within the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra...
, a group of the most powerful Mafia bosses in Sicily who regularly met, supposedly to iron out differences and solve disputes.
In the beginning of the 1970s Calò moved to Rome. Under the guise of an antiques dealer and under the false identity of Mario Agliarolo he invested in real estate and laundered large proceeds of crime for many Mafia families. He was able to establish close links with common criminals of the Banda della Magliana
Banda della Magliana
The Banda della Magliana was an Italian criminal organization based in Rome, particularly active throughout the late 1970s until the early 1990s. Given by the media, the name refers to the original neighborhood, the Magliana, of most of its members....
, neo-fascist groups and members of the Italian intelligence agencies.
During the early 1980s he supported Salvatore Riina
Salvatore Riina
Salvatore "Totò" Riina is a member of the Sicilian Mafia who became the most powerful member of the criminal organization in the early 1980s. Fellow mobsters nicknamed him The Beast due to his violent nature, or sometimes The Short One due to his diminutive stature...
and the Corleonesi
Corleonesi
The Corleonesi is the name given to a faction within the Sicilian Mafia that dominated Cosa Nostra in the 1980s and the 1990s. It was called the Corleonesi because its most important leaders came from the town of Corleone, first Luciano Leggio and later Totò Riina, Bernardo Provenzano and Leoluca...
during the Second Mafia War
Second Mafia War
The Second Mafia War was a conflict within the Sicilian Mafia, mostly taking place in the early 1980s. As with any criminal organization, the history of the Sicilian Mafia is replete with conflicts and power struggles, and the violence that results from them, but these are generally localised and...
that decimated the rival Mafia families.
Calò arranged the bombing of the 904 express train
Train 904 bombing
The Train 904 bombing, also known as the Christmas Massacre, was a terror attack which occurred on December 23, 1984, in the Apennine Base Tunnel. A bomb on the 904 express train from Naples to Milan was detonated, killed 17 and wounded 267...
between Florence and Bologna on December 23, 1984 that killed 16 people and injured around 200 others. It was meant to divert attention from the revelations given by various Mafia informants, including Buscetta. Calò and his men had joined up with neo-fascist terrorists and the Camorra
Camorra
The Camorra is a Mafia-type criminal organization, or secret society, originating in the region of Campania and its capital Naples in Italy. It is one of the oldest and largest criminal organizations in Italy, dating to the 18th century.-Background:...
to carry out the atrocity.
Giuseppe Calò's 1985 arrest
Poggio San Lorenzo
Poggio San Lorenzo is a comune in the Province of Rieti in the Italian region Latium, located about 50 km northeast of Rome and about 15 km south of Rieti....
, in the province of Rieti
Province of Rieti
The Province of Rieti is a province in the Lazio region of Italy. Its capital is the city of Rieti.It has an area of 2,749 km², and a total population of 153,258 . There are 73 comuni in the province, see Comuni of the Province of Rieti.It was founded in 1927.-External links:*...
, together with Antonio Rotolo
Antonio Rotolo
Antonio "Nino" Rotolo is an Italian Mafia boss from the Pagliarelli area in Palermo that traditionally was under the control of the Motisi Mafia family. Rotolo was the underboss of Matteo Motisi, but according to some pentiti he was the de facto leader representing the mandamento on the Sicilian...
, one of the Mafia's heroin movers. He was one of the hundreds of defendants at the Maxi Trial
Maxi Trial
The Maxi Trial was a criminal trial that took place in Sicily during the mid-1980s that saw hundreds of defendants on trial convicted for a multitude of crimes relating to Mafia activities, based primarily on testimony given in as evidence from a former boss turned informant...
that started the following year, where he was charged with Mafia association, money laundering and the Naples train bombing. He cross-examined
Cross-examination
In law, cross-examination is the interrogation of a witness called by one's opponent. It is preceded by direct examination and may be followed by a redirect .- Variations by Jurisdiction :In...
Tommaso Buscetta himself and the pair, who had previously been lifelong friends, engaged in a vicious round of mud-slinging and insults as they attempted to discredit each other.
At the end of the Maxi Trial in 1987 Calò was found guilty and given two life sentences. Anti-Mafia prosecutors and investigators were outraged when it was discovered in 1989 that Calò and a number of other convicted Mafia bosses were living a life of relative luxury in their own section of the prison hospital, being waited on by common criminals and having their food brought in from the outside. Calò was supposedly suffering from asthma
Asthma
Asthma is the common chronic inflammatory disease of the airways characterized by variable and recurring symptoms, reversible airflow obstruction, and bronchospasm. Symptoms include wheezing, coughing, chest tightness, and shortness of breath...
but he showed no symptoms. The anti-Mafia judges forced Calò and his fellow Mafiosi back to their cells. He was substituted by Salvatore Cancemi
Salvatore Cancemi
Salvatore Cancemi was a member of the Sicilian Mafia. He would be the first member of the Sicilian Mafia Commission that turned himself in voluntarily and became a pentito, a collaborator with the Italian judicial authorities...
as capo mandamento of the Puorta Nova family.
Roberto Calvi's 1982 murder
In July 1991 the Mafia pentitoPentito
Pentito designates people in Italy who, formerly part of criminal or terrorist organizations, following their arrests decide to "repent" and collaborate with the judicial system to help investigations...
(a mafioso turned informer) Francesco Marino Mannoia
Francesco Marino Mannoia
Francesco Marino Mannoia is a former member of the Sicilian Mafia who became a pentito in 1989. His nickname was Mozzarella. He is considered to be one of the most reliable government witnesses against the Mafia...
claimed that Roberto Calvi
Roberto Calvi
Roberto Calvi was an Italian banker dubbed "God's Banker" by the press because of his close association with the Holy See. A native of Milan, Calvi was Chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, which collapsed in one of modern Italy's biggest political scandals...
– nicknamed "God's banker" because he was in charge of Banco Ambrosiano
Banco Ambrosiano
Banco Ambrosiano was an Italian bank which collapsed in 1982. At the centre of the bank's failure was its chairman, Roberto Calvi and his membership in the illegal Masonic Lodge Propaganda Due...
, in which the Vatican Bank
Vatican Bank
The Institute for Works of Religion , commonly known as the Vatican Bank, is a privately held institute located inside Vatican City run by a professional bank CEO who reports directly to a committee of cardinals, and ultimately to the Pope...
was the main share-holder – had been killed in 1982 because he had lost Mafia funds when the Banco Ambrosiano collapsed. According to Mannoia the killer was Francesco Di Carlo
Francesco Di Carlo
Francesco Di Carlo is a member of the Mafia who turned state witness in 1996...
, a mafioso living in London at the time, and the order to kill Calvi had come from Calò and Licio Gelli
Licio Gelli
Licio Gelli is an Italian financier, chiefly known for his role in the Banco Ambrosiano scandal. He was revealed in 1981 as being the Venerable Master of the clandestine Masonic lodge Propaganda Due...
, the head of the secret Italian masonic lodge Propaganda Due
Propaganda Due
Propaganda Due , or P2, was a Masonic lodge operating under the jurisdiction of the Grand Orient of Italy from 1945 to 1976 , and a pseudo-Masonic or "black" or "covert" lodge operating illegally from 1976 to...
(P2). When Di Carlo became an informer in June 1996, he denied that he was the killer, but admitted that he had been approached by Calò to do the job. However, Di Carlo could not be reached in time, and when he later called Calò, the latter said that everything had been taken care of already.
In 1997, Italian
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
prosecutors in Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
implicated Calò in Calvi's murder, along with Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian businessman with wide ranging interests, as well as Ernesto Diotallevi (one of the leaders of the Banda della Magliana
Banda della Magliana
The Banda della Magliana was an Italian criminal organization based in Rome, particularly active throughout the late 1970s until the early 1990s. Given by the media, the name refers to the original neighborhood, the Magliana, of most of its members....
, a Roman Mafia-like organization) and Di Carlo.
In July 2003, the prosecution concluded that the Mafia acted not only in its own interests, but also to ensure that Calvi could not blackmail "politico-institutional figures and [representatives] of freemasonry, the P2 lodge, and the IOR
IOR
The abbreviation IOR may refer to:* Institute of Recruiters, a non-profit Institute for recruiters and HR professionals* Index of refraction* Istituto per le Opere di Religione , the "Vatican Bank"...
with whom he had invested substantial sums of money, some of it from Cosa Nostra and Italian public corporations". The trial finally began in October 2005.
In March 2007, prosecutor Luca Tescaroli requested life sentences for the already convicted Pippo Calò, Flavio Carboni, Ernesto Diotallevi and Calvi's bodyguard Silvano Vittor. All of them deny involvement. Tescaroli began his conclusions by saying Calvi was killed "to punish him for taking large quantities of money from criminal organisations and especially the Mafia organisation known as the 'Cosa Nostra'."
On June 6, 2007, Calò and his co-defendants were cleared of murdering Calvi. The presiding judge in the trial threw out the charges because of "insufficient evidence" in a surprise verdict after 20 months of evidence. Calò, who gave evidence from his high security prison, denied the charges. "I had no interest in killing Calvi," he said. "I didn't have the time, nor the inclination. Besides, if I had wanted him dead do you not think I would have picked my own people to do the job?" Calò's defence argued there were others who had wanted Calvi silenced.
Dissociation
In September 2001, in the course of the trial of the Via D'Amelio bloodbath that killed judge Paolo BorsellinoPaolo Borsellino
Paolo Borsellino was an Italian anti-Mafia magistrate who was killed by a Mafia car bomb in Palermo, less than two months after his fellow anti-Mafia magistrate Giovanni Falcone had been assassinated....
, Pippo Calò declared he dissociated from Cosa Nostra. In an extraordinary statement he admitted Cosa Nostra existed and that he had been part of its Commission
Sicilian Mafia Commission
The Sicilian Mafia Commission, known as Commissione or Cupola, is a body of leading Mafia members to decide on important questions concerning the actions of, and settling disputes within the Sicilian Mafia or Cosa Nostra...
– breaking the law of silence or omertà
Omertà
Omertà is a popular attitude and code of honour and a common definition is the "code of silence". It is common in areas of southern Italy, such as Sicily, Apulia, Calabria, and Campania, where criminal organizations defined as Mafia such as the Cosa Nostra, 'Ndrangheta, Sacra Corona Unita, and...
.
However, he did not become a pentito
Pentito
Pentito designates people in Italy who, formerly part of criminal or terrorist organizations, following their arrests decide to "repent" and collaborate with the judicial system to help investigations...
– government witness – and refused to testify against his fellow mafiosi. Calò said he was prepared to face his own responsibility but would not name others. “I am a mafioso but I don’t want to be accused of bloodbaths,” he said.