Dublin also comes into the equation,withthe notorious Ansbacher account securing a leading role for our capital city.

When Roberto Calvi was fou nd hang i ng b e ne ath Blackfriars Bridge in London almost 22 years ago, many of Italy's elite breathed a sigh of relief. Calvi is believed to have brought explosive secrets to the grave, in one of the most intriguing unsolved crime cases and financial scandals of modern times.

The initial inquest into Calvi's death returned a verdict of suicide. Now, two decades later, four suspects are on trial in Italy for his murder.

Carlo Calvi, Roberto's son, has spent 21 years and millions of dollars on a personal crusade to get to the bottom of his father's death.

"Over the past 20 years,we have spent close to $20 million on related matters. About $4.5 million was spent on private investigators and a similar amount on lawyers and accountants.

"The family had resources, but I have to say they have been considerably reduced," he says.

"The original investigation focused on the money-laundering aspect. Now they're also looking at off-shore companies controlled by the Vatican."

Calvi believes the trial could expose some of the alleged connections between the Vatican, the Mafia and the clandestine Masonic sect P2.

"We are closer to getting the full picture, but it is still some way off. My father did not act alone," says Calvi, who lives in Montreal.

"My father was eliminated by politicians because his position had become untenable."

Calvi points to the investigators' findings that the Mafia's aim in murdering his father was not only to punish him for his misuse of funds, but also to prevent potential attempts to blackmail politicians, P2 and the Institute for Religious Works - better known as theVatican bank.

"He was trying to restructure the bank to meet requests by the Bank of Italy. The person who opposed his plan was X [a senior elder statesman who cannot be named for legal reasons].

"He was going to have to defend himself and reveal the activities of theVatican bank. My father identified X as his main physical threat. The Mafia simply carried out the murder."

The recovery of the corpse of a paunchy middle-aged man on the morning of Friday June 18, 1982 caused a sensation when it emerged that the victim was the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, Italy's biggest private bank, and the man known as `God's banker'.

Roberto Calvi earned the sobriquet through his financial dealings with theVatican, and his close relationship with the Pope's top lieutenants.

At the time, Banco Ambrosiano was under investigation in Italy. Immediately after Calvi's murder, the bank collapsed with a $1.3 billion hole in the balance sheet.

Roberto Calvi fled Italy in the summer of 1982. He was due to defend himself at an appeal on alleged currency violations, and was clearly a frightened man.

Shortly before his death he had publicly declared in a rare interview that he felt threatened and that "any barbarity" was possible. "A lot of people have a lot to answer for in this affair," he said, launching a counter-threat. "I'm not sure who, but sooner or later it will come out."

The affair he was speaking of was the financial black hole in the Banco Ambrosiano. The vast majority of the debt had been incurred by dummy corporations owned or controlled by theVatican bank.

Calvi had told his lawyers: "If the whole thing comes out, it'll be enough to start the Third World War."

Calvi's widow Clara and son Carlo disputed the initial suicide verdict given by London City police. They called for a thorough inquest. When that occurred a year later, it returned an open verdict.

It would take events which unfolded in Rome nearly 20 years later to persuade the city police to look again at the Calvi case.

In 2002, following a new post mortem on Calvi's exhumed remains, forensic scientists appointed by Italian judges concluded Calvi was strangled before being hung from the scaffolding.

That December, a Mafia supergrass, Antonio Giuffre, told police that Calvi had been murdered because Mob bosses were angry at the way he had mishandled their money.

Flavio Carboni, a Sardinian businessman, and Pippo `The Cashier' Calo, a leading figure in the Sicilian mafia and a convicted killer, are accused of conspiring to lure the 62-year-old banker to London.

On trial with them are Ernesto Diotallevi, a senior figure in the underworld of Rome, and Manuela Kleinszig, an Austrian citizen, who was a girlfriend of Carboni at the time. All deny any wrongdoing.

Carboni told reporters: "I know as much about Calvi's murder as I do about the killing of Jesus Christ."

Calvi is not suing the present defendents, who are been tried in Rome. While it is evident that he believes they were heavily involved, Calvi does not believe they were the instigators. "They are not the important parties," he says.

Calvi contends that the motive for his father's murder was to stop him revealing secrets that would shock the world. He reels off dates, places and the names of Mafia assassains and inter nationally known politicans he believes are connected to the murder.

He has discussed taking independent legal action with his solicitors. "I have discussed taking actions deriving from the mishandling of the original investigation by the police [in London], or against Italian state-controlled companies and their former management," he says.

"The reason I am considering this is not so much because I have a grievance against these companies, but rather because civil proceedings often allow you to tackle things you cannot do in criminal proceedings."

Calvi,who was 29 at the time of his father's death, cal mly de scribes what he believes happened on the days that preceeded it. "My father was lured to London to be murdered.The assassins were there, waiting for him," he says.

"He left Rome and told us he was going to be unavailable over the weekend. My mother and I were in Washington at the time. We did not know he was going to Austria, but we knew he was under pressure to reveal details about Panamanian companies [controlled by the Vatican and funded by major Italian state-controlled companies].We obviously never imagined what would happen."

The Mafia are believed to have told Roberto Calvi to flee Italy, after telling him he had lost his appeal against currency violations charges; in fact, no decision had been made.

Armed with a fake Venezuelan passport, Calvi went to Britian via Austria and Switzerland.

Calvi is believed to have met his killers at his flat in Chelsea, West London. He often travelled with as many as a dozen bodyguards.

The fact that he had none possibly indicated that he trusted his visitors. Calvi's briefcase, believed to contain some of his most precious documents, has never been found.

When Calvi's body was discovered, bricks and pieces of rocks had been stuffed into the pocket of the 62-year-old's grey suit, along with $15,000 in various currencies.

Many believe Calvi's suspension beneath the Blackfriars Bridge and the bricks and stones on his body were the signature of the P2, of which Calvi was reputedly a member.

The rituals of the lodge included the wearing of black robes and the use of the word "friar" in addressing each other. Bricks and stones are the substance of masonry, and in initiation ceremonies any new member was reportedly told that betrayal of the P2's secrets would mean death by hanging, and the washing of his corpse by the tides.

Carlo Calvi does not dispute that his father was involved with P2. He says: "My father was very much a self-made man. He progressed through his own natural abilities. He was a very dynamic person, but he did not have a lot of contacts with other business groups initially. He didn't have a wide social circle.

"As the bank, Ambrosiano, grew, it became more important to develop better contacts. He needed to make alliances and sought to make the acquaintance of Umberto Ortolani - a high-ranking member of P2. In some ways, these alliances actually became the instrument for others to control him," he says.

Millions of dollars remains missing, unaccounted for in the bank's collapse. But last December about $70 million of Banco Ambrosiano's missing funds were discovered in banks in the Bahamas.

Italian investigators have indicated that these funds could be the proceeds of a huge money-laundering operation undertaken by Calvi on behalf of the Medellin drug lords of Colombia.

Swiss prosecutors previously seized about $40 million held in a Dublin Ansbacher account.

"Ansbacher was a milestone," says Calvi. "It represented a big chapter in the criminal bankruptcy case."

It has been alleged that much of the money b e i ng fu n nel le d through theVatican bank's pipeline at Ambrosiano was financing P2's support for Latin American fascism.

What is new about the current investigation is the massive quantification of these operations,which, according to the Milanese magistrates, developed the link between Calvi and Archbishop Paul Marcinkus "far beyond any normal relationship between two financial institutions."

There is evidence to suggest that the Vatican was interfering in the internal affairs of Italy, giving financial support of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua and the Solidarity movement in Poland, as well as the attempted secret takeover by Calvi and the P2 of Italy's most influential newspaper, Corriere Sera.

Several attempts have been made to penetrate the Vatican and determine the exact nature of its links with Calvi, but Italian and American investigators were refused permission to question Marcinkus, then president of the Vatican's bank.

Marcinkus, who is now in his 80s and lives in Arizona, still has the protection of a Vatican state diplomatic badge. There are fears that he may never talk.

Carlo Calvi is likely to remain equally intransigent.

"My father was part of me and my mother - the family," he says. "My expectations have always been limited and I don't think I'll walk out of court and say `justice has been done'. But we owe it to him not to rest until the guilty have been identified."