A dawn raid on an Italian warehouse uncovers a secret far-right society, P2, just months before a planned coup. Prosecutor Giulano Turone, who led the raid, reveals how this discovery brought down Italy's government and exposed Roberto Calvi as P2's financier. Calvi, desperate to save himself, turns to God. 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
Chapter 1: What led to the raid on the Italian warehouse?
Friends of the Pod subscribers can listen to the full season of Shadow Kingdom right now. Join Friends of the Pod at crooked.com slash friends or on Apple Podcasts. As the sun rose on a spring day in 1981... Police officers in unmarked cars drove south from Milan, past fields, farms, and small towns, until they arrived at a mattress factory and knocked on the door.
These men were working with Judge Giuliano Turone. Turone was famous for investigating the mafia in Milan, Calvi's hometown. He was convinced Calvi was involved with the mob. Turone retold the story to me.
Roberto Calvi was the money laundry man of the Corleonesi, Luciano Liggio, Salvatore Irina, etc.
But on this day, Torona wasn't actually investigating Calvi. No, instead, he'd received a tip that bordered on conspiracy theory. That in this factory town, there could be evidence linking the mafia with an illegal underground branch of the Freemasons. He took the tip seriously, hand-picking officers for his team and keeping the raid confidential, even from other cops.
Turone was worried that local police would tip off the Masonic group.
I wrote down an order. You have to go in complete secret.
The police pushed open the factory doors and were greeted by a secretary who led them to the second floor. As the officers climbed upstairs, they weren't quite sure what to expect. They were hoping to find a paper trail of where the mafia was moving its money, so they scoured desk drawers and bookshelves for documents, all while a secretary kept a close and silent watch on them.
It didn't take long until they found a briefcase belonging to the factory's owner, Licio Gelli.
We knew that Licio Gelli was a powerful person. We knew that he was protected. And we did not know the names, but we knew that he had faithful persons among the Carabinieri. Even the finance police
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Chapter 2: Who is Giuliano Turone and what was his role?
And I want to zoom in on Gelli for a moment, the man who recruited Calvi and made P2 what it was. I learned that in the 60s, when Gelli joined the Italian Freemasons, these guys were largely democratic and apolitical. But as Gelli rose to power, he remade his local group, P2, in his image. Anti-communist and pro-fascist. Very pro-fascist. Gelli said, quote, I studied with fascism.
I fought for fascism. I am a fascist, and I will die a fascist. I realized, after listening to hours of tapes of this guy, that for Gelli, World War II had never really ended. He came of age under Mussolini, when Italy was unified by a strong right identity and a single leader. To him, the Italy of the 1970s, around the time that Calvi was ascending, wasn't social freefall.
Divorce and abortion were legal. The streets were filled with hippies, liberals, and communists.
Italy, one of the most Roman Catholic countries in the world, and home of the Vatican, legalized abortion.
Again, Italy has inflation, unemployment, and an impotent government, political terrorism, and street violence. But to say that they may turn to history...
The P2 leader was obsessed with restoring order to Italy. He wanted to demolish democracy and bring back a dictatorship. On a certain level, Calvi's connection to Jelly and P2 made sense. Calvi did volunteer to fight for the Axis powers. He was a rich banker, certainly anti-communist, but this was much more radical than anything I'd previously heard about Calvi.
I knew Calvi wanted to be rich and powerful, sure, but I didn't get the impression that he wanted a far-right takeover of the state. At this point in my research, in my quest to figure out who killed Calvi, I felt like I was, yet again, tripping face-first into a wall of absurd conspiracies. I mean, a secret society plotting a national coup? Come on.
I needed to find an anchor, someone to comfort the English side of my brain. Someone that could say, there's a perfectly reasonable explanation for all of this. That's when I found an American in Europe who could relate to exactly what I was going through. I called him up when I was in Italy.
I was a financial journalist. I was interested in the Calvi story. They said his body was found in the city of London. And so I grabbed a cab and went to the city of London. It was just an impulse.
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