SHADOW KINGDOM: GOD’S BANKER
A hair-raising true-crime series from Crooked Media and Campside Media, is almost too interesting, like a finance version of “The Da Vinci Code.” - Sarah Larson, The New Yorker
If you asked me what the hardest types of shows to make are, it’s historical nonfiction. When you sit down to tell a story that’s 40+ years old, a big challenge is finding living sources who were there when the events happened. And I am so proud to say that we did it.
I stepped into the role of Senior Producer on this series just as the reporting team was gearing up for a final trip to Italy to track down several highly sensitive sources who we hoped held the keys to never-before-reported details about the final days of Roberto Calvi. I oversaw the remainder of the reporting along with all script writing, edits, and sound design for this inaugural season of Campside and Crooked Media’s Shadow Kingdom series. We juggled tape in Italian and English, hunting 20 year-old tapes with key interviews, negotiations with lawyers, and dare I say, we enjoyed the entire rollercoaster.
The story centers around Roberto Calvi and his orchestration of a money laundering web involving the Vatican Bank that touched the entire international financial system. This show is about much more than a man and his money laundering, and goes further to look at the intersections of democracy, fascism, communism, and religion in twentieth-century Europe.