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	Reports: Bahamas Govt Failed to Co-operate with Investigation into Bank Scandal The Tribune August 8, 2011 http://www.tribune242.com/news/0802011_investigation_news_pg1 THE Bahamas government has failed to co-operate with an investigation into the whereabouts of hundreds of millions of dollars linked to one of the biggest bank scandals in history, according to foreign news reports. The collapse of Banco Ambrosiano in the early 1980s is a tale of murder, Mafia plots, international money laundering schemes and clandestine Masonic sects. The Bahamas branch of the bank, Banco Ambrosiano Overseas Limited, was at the very centre of the scandal - yet according to the press in Italy and the UK, requests for help from local authorities have fallen on deaf ears. Italian prosecutors are looking for funds allegedly squirreled away by former bank chairman Roberto Calvi, known as "God's banker" because the Vatican Bank was the largest sharholder. In years leading up to the collapse, Calvi set up companies in the Bahamas and South America to which he funnelled hundreds of millions in bank funds. It is claimed that $800 million in total went missing. Following the bank's collapse, Calvi was found dead in London in 1982, hanging by the neck from Blackfriar's Bridge. There have been several trials and investigations into the circumstances surrounding his death. Italian courts have ruled it a murder, rumoured to be a retribution hit for the loss of Mafia money during the collapse. In 2005, Italian investigators claimed to have traced several hundred million of the missing funds to accounts in the Bahamas. The prosecutors were said to have been eager to follow this lead, however as UK newspaper The Observer reported in August of that year, "Police sources in London indicated that the authorities in the Bahamas have been slow in supplying them with details associated with the accounts." Reports in the Italian press from 2009 indicate that two years on, little had changed. Some claimed the Italian prosecutors received no response whatsoever to their official requests for co-operation. Calls to Attorney General John Delaney for comment were not returned before press time last night. Alfred Sears, the attorney general at the time of the official request, could also not be reached. A source close to the Office of the Attorney General told The Tribune the Italian investigators were probably not ignored intentionally, but rather as a result of the inefficiency and disorganisation of the office and lack of focus on international requests.
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