Opus Dei Financier Dismembered

This seems like a case where a "follow the money" investigation methodology could be used. How far does the money trail lead? All the way to the vatican?

The Independent
The badly beaten and mutilated corpse of Gianmario Roveraro, one of Italy's reputedly most pious financiers, was discovered "cut to pieces" under a motorway overpass near Parma yesterday, some two weeks after he was kidnapped while returning home from a meeting of the conservative Roman Catholic group Opus Dei.
...
The killing recalled the murder of Roberto Calvi, the Italian financier known as "God's Banker" for his links to the Vatican, who was found hanged from Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982.
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Since 5 July, Mr Roveraro made several telephone calls within 48 hours, to his wife Silvana and to his business assistants who he asked to sell €1m of shares in a family company. Carabinieri paramilitary police traced the alleged gang by following the signature of public telephone cards used to make calls during ransom negotiations, the sources said. Mr Roveraro was one of 64 people under investigation in the Parmalat affair and prosecutors had asked for him to be indicted on charges of belonging to a criminal organisation conspiring in fraudulent bankruptcy.

Perhaps this is more material for Dan Brown.

You never know. From what Ive heard (outside of Dan Brown novels) that Opus Dei has quite a hammer over the head of the Vatican, and thus, its more extreme facets get overlooked by the Holy See.

Originally posted by df1
This seems like a case where a "follow the money" investigation methodology could be used. How far does the money trail lead? All the way to the vatican?

How about "all the way to the Mafia"? It's a known Mafia tactic, and the news story suggests that motive.

The Independent
Since 5 July, Mr Roveraro made several telephone calls within 48 hours, to his wife Silvana and to his business assistants who he asked to sell €1m of shares in a family company. Carabinieri paramilitary police traced the alleged gang by following the signature of public telephone cards used to make calls during ransom negotiations, the sources said. Mr Roveraro was one of 64 people under investigation in the Parmalat affair and prosecutors had asked for him to be indicted on charges of belonging to a criminal organisation conspiring in fraudulent bankruptcy.

We're pretty much unfamilar with goings-on in the rest of the world, but the Pramalat scandal was the equivalent of the Enron scandal here in America. The situation has been ongoing since 2003... although it's inaccurate, you can think of him as kind of a "Ken Lay" figure.

Someone wanted their money back and someone wanted revenge. What are the odds that his little game caught a Mafia boss?

The Vatican is an unlikely source for this. There's been no denunciation from the pulpits of Parmalat and no organized messages from the Church about these practices. When the Vatican is influencing things, they always go with public announcements to bring EVERYbody into line because they figure that one straying sheep can lead others astray.

...and if they were that Machiavellian then they would have excommunicated most of the American Catholics, priests, bishops, and congregation for their position on birth control (and we'd have had a number of prominent pro-birth control Catholics die very mysteriously.)