- The Vatican financial scandal will go to court.
- The trial involved a powerful former cardinal.
- The prosecutor painted a suspicious, high-risk investment involving millions of Vatican funds.
A financial scandal involving opaque and loss-making Vatican property transactions paid for with charitable funds opened on Tuesday after a two-year investigation involving a once powerful cardinal.
Vatican prosecutors charged 10 defendants, including high-profile financiers and church employees in London, of participating in various crimes such as corruption, fraud and corruption.
Read | Police seek to arrest Italian middlemen in Vatican real estate transactions
It is unclear whether the former Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who was the No. 2 figure of the powerful State Secretariat at the time, will appear in the temporary court in the Vatican Museum on the day of the trial.
The 73-year-old Becciu said he was an innocent victim of a conspiracy and the most high-profile defendant involved in the church’s devastating purchase of 17 000 m2 Under his supervision, a London property located in an upscale community in Chelsea.
The case against Becciu was accused of corruption, abuse of power, and tampering with witnesses. It also included separate charges of hundreds of thousands of euros in church funds paid to his brother’s charity.
Former right-hand man of Pope Francis
Involving the former right-hand man in the trial of Pope Francis-he was fired by the Pope in September and deprived of the cardinal’s privileges-this is the first time in modern history that a Vatican criminal prosecutor has prosecuted a cardinal.
The complex case charged by the prosecutor depicts a suspicious, risky investment involving millions of dollars in the Vatican’s funds, with little or no supervision, and subject to the State Secretariat (the most important department of the Vatican responsible for general and foreign affairs) .
A 487-page indictment released earlier this month revealed the secrets of huge bank transfers, texting between collaborators from impounded mobile phones–even the exchange of bags of money and the secrets of being in luxury hotels. Meeting.
The prosecutor wrote that the main defendant was “actors in a decadent predatory and lucrative system, sometimes made possible by limited but very sophisticated complicity and internal indulgence.”
Since becoming Pope in 2013, Francis has vowed to clean up the finances of the church and has been plagued by scandals for decades. After the Vatican police raided the secretariat office in 2019, Francis deprived him of the right to supervise his own funds and delegated this responsibility to others.
The scandal is particularly embarrassing because the funds used for venture capital, including the 350 million euro ($415 million) catastrophic investment in Chelsea, came from Peter’s Pence, the annual fund of the Pope’s charity.
The current case dates back to 2013, when the secretariat mainly borrowed more than US$200 million from Credit Suisse to invest in a Luxembourg fund managed by Italian-Swiss businessman Raffaele Mincione. Half is used for stock market purchases, and the rest is used for part of the London building.
The prosecutor said that Mincione used the money to invest in high-risk companies that the church could not control. By 2018, the Secretariat had lost millions of dollars and tried to exit the transaction.
The prosecutor said, but Gianluigi Torzi, another London financier, acted as an intermediary for the purchase of the rest of the building, severed ties with Mincione and joined forces with him instead.
Fraud
Torzi arranged for the Holy See to give Mincione 40 million euros to buy a share of the financier’s London property, but it was alleged that a clause was added to the transaction that allowed him to control the building through voting rights.
Torzi was accused of demanding 15 million euros to relinquish control.
The prosecutor claimed that Mincione and Torzi were helped by former secretariat financial adviser Enrico Crasso and employee Fabrizio Tirabassi, and they both faced charges of fraud and other charges.
Also implicated are two former senior officials of the Vatican’s financial regulator, including former Vatican President and Swiss lawyer Rene Bruelhart. The prosecutor said he did not do enough to protect the interests of the Secretariat.
Another turning point is that Becciu was accused of paying the defendant Cecilia Marogna 575 000 euros in Vatican funds, which were earmarked for the release of captured foreign priests and nuns. Marogna-called “Lady Cardinal” by the Italian media-used Luxury and hotel.
The prosecutor claimed that the highest level of the Vatican, including Becky’s boss and Pope’s ally Cardinal Pietro Parolin, supported the London joint venture, but did not know its financial details.
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