Giuseppe "Pippo" Calò (born 30 September 1931) is an Italian mobster and member of the Sicilian Mafia in Porta Nuova. He was referred to as the cassiere di Cosa Nostra ("cashier of Cosa Nostra") because he was heavily involved in the financial side of organized crime, primarily money laundering. He was arrested in 1985 and charged with ordering the murder of Roberto Calvi – nicknamed il banchiere di Dio ("the banker of God") – of the Banco Ambrosiano in 1982, but was acquitted in 2007 due to "insufficient evidence" in a surprise verdict. After Calò was sentenced to 23 years' imprisonment as part of the 1986/87 Maxi Trial, he was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1989 for organising the 1984 Train 904 bombing. He was given several further life sentences between 1995 and 2002.
Boss of the Porta Nuova Mafia family
Born and raised in Palermo, the capital of Sicily, he was inducted into the Porta Nuova Mafia family at the age of 23 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. According to reports, in the mid-1970s Calò strengthened relations with historical bosses of the Neapolitan Camorra, such as Lorenzo Nuvoletta and Vincenzo Lubrano.
During the early 1980s, he supported Salvatore Riina and the Corleonesi during the Second Mafia War that decimated the rival Mafia families. During the war, Giuseppe Calò personally took part in the murder of his former best friend Tommaso Buscetta's sons in September 1981, as well as the killings of Palermo bosses Rosario Riccobono and Salvatore Scaglione on November 30, 1982.
Bombing of 904 express train
Calò arranged the bombing of the 904 express train between Florence and Bologna on 23 December 1984 that killed 16 people and injured 267 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 boss Giuseppe Misso to carry out the attack.
Arrest and trial
After several years as a fugitive, Calò was arrested on 30 March 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 train bombing.
At the end of the Maxi Trial in December 1987, Calò was found guilty and given 23 years in prison. He was substituted by Salvatore Cancemi as capo mandamento of the Porta Nuova family.
In February 1989, Calò was convicted for ordering and organising the 904 train attack, and sentenced to life imprisonment.
Murder of Roberto Calvi
In July 1991 the Mafia pentito (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. 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.