John Follain 
 

A NEW investigation into the death of Roberto Calvi, the Italian banker found suspended from a rope under Blackfriars Bridge in London more than 18 years ago, is expected to conclude that he was murdered. 

Three court-appointed scientists will deliver a report to a public prosecutor in Rome next month. It is based on an autopsy performed after Calvi's body was exhumed from a cemetery at Drezzo, northern Italy, and tests on DNA and other material taken from the crime scene. 

The scientists spent two years trying to recreate the last moments of the financier, who had been called "God's banker" because of his links with the Vatican. They were able to use techniques that were not available to earlier investigators. 

An inquest in London shortly after Calvi's death in June 1982 concluded that the banker had committed suicide after filling his trouser pockets with more than 11lb of bricks - a verdict that met widespread scepticism in Italy. 

A source close to Calvi's family says the experts - a forensic scientist, a chemist and an anthropologist - will reject that first finding and report that Calvi was murdered. 

Earlier this year, City of London police allowed the investigators to take evidence to Italy that included Calvi's underwear, on which two separate genetic DNA imprints were found, and his watch. 

In the fourth postmortem on the body, tissue was taken from Calvi's fingertips to resolve doubts about whether he handled the bricks that were found in his pockets and whether his hands had touched the scaffolding. The body was also examined for signs of strangulation and other injuries, and for traces of any drugs or psychotropic medicines that he might have been given. 

Professor Antonio Fornari, a forensic scientist hired by the family, said: "The experts have found nothing that contradicts the theory that Calvi was murdered, and several elements that support it. 

"They include a deep and significant bruise on his right wrist which is not compatible with a mark made by a rope, which shows that someone probably seized him by the wrist before he died." 

Calvi's son Carlo Calvi, a Montreal businessman, welcomed the end of the investigation. Its findings had justified his difficult decision to have the body exhumed, he said. "Having to stand by and watch it being taken out of the cemetery was shocking, but we must do all we can to show that he did not commit suicide. My mother has been trying for the past 18 years to give a meaning to my father's death. 

"There is a wealth of evidence and testimony that my father was murdered on mafia orders. He also had many enemies within the Vatican." 

When the report is complete, prosecutors are expected to recommend that men charged with conspiracy to murder Calvi are sent for trial. They include Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian businessman, Pippo "the Cashier" Calo, a Sicilian mafia boss, and Francesco "the Strangler" Di Carlo, a mafia heroin dealer who lived in Woking, Surrey. 

A week before his death, Calvi, 62, had fled an Italian investigation into fraud at his bank, Banco Ambrosiano, which later collapsed with debts of more than $1 billion. 

Marino "Mozzarella" Mannoia, a mafia supergrass, claims that Di Carlo strangled Calvi with his hands before hanging the body from the bridge to make the death appear like suicide. He says Di Carlo was acting on the orders of the mob's ruling commission, the Cupola, to whom Calvi owed tens of billions of lire. 

Renato Borzone, Carboni's lawyer, is confident that a court will rule that Calvi committed suicide. "The first, British inquest was carried out by leading authorities and was beyond reproach," he said.