GOD'S BANKER MURDERED BY MAFIA HITMEN

A MONEY man dubbed God's banker was the target of a mafia hit for bungling a cash-laundering operation which implicated the Vatican, it was claimed yesterday.

Roberto Calvi fled Italy as his banking empire crashed 25 years ago.

Nine days later, he was found hanging from scaffolding under London's Blackfriar's Bridge in an apparent suicide, with five bricks in his pockets, along with £10,000 in mixed currency.

A court in Rome, sitting in a specially fortified bunker, was told yesterday that Calvi's death in June 1982 was on mafia orders.

Mobster-turned-supergrass Francesco Mannoia told the murder trial Calvi was targeted by Cosa Nostra bosses furious that the cash laundering plot - involving millions of pounds - had gone wrong.