Vatican brings 10 people to justice, including influential cardinal accused of financial crimes

An eminent Italian cardinal was one of the 10 people brought to justice in the Vatican saturday accused of financial crimes, including embezzlement, money laundering, fraud, extortion and abuse of power.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, ex alto funcionario de la administración del Vaticano, así como dos altos cargoes of the Unidad de Inteligencia Financiera del Vaticano, serán juzgados el 27 de julio por un escándalo multimillonario que involucra la compra por parte del Vaticano de un edificio en un barrio excluded from London.

The trial will generate a lot of media interest for the small city-state surrounded by Rome and appears to underline Pope Francis’ determination to clean up the Vatican’s finances.

Becciu, 73, whom the Pope impeached last year for alleged nepotism despite always claiming his innocence, becomes the top Vatican official accused of financial crimes.

The Pope personally gave the required approval last week for Becciu to be prosecuted, according to a 487-page impeachment request seen by Reuters. The Vatican announced the charges in a two-page statement.

The charges against Becciu include embezzlement and abuse of power. An Italian who worked for him was accused of embezzlement and the cardinal’s former personal secretary, the priest Mauro Carlino, was denounced for extortion.

In a statement released on Saturday by his environment, the cardinal said he was “the victim of a conspiracy” and proclaimed his “absolute innocence”. In addition, he said he was in a hurry to explain himself after having denounced having been put in the “media pillory”.

Carlino’s lawyer, meanwhile, said his client was innocent, that he “acted on orders” and saved the Vatican millions of euros. He further argued that starting a trial so early does not give defense lawyers enough time to prepare.

The influential cardinal was number two to the Secretary of State, the headquarters of the Holy See, when the process to purchase the London building began in 2014.

Among the other defendants, the Swiss René Brulhart, former president of the Financial Information Authority (AIF), and financial policeman of the Holy See, must answer for abuse of power.

Another clergyman will be tried, Bishop Enrico Crasso, former manager of the Secretary of State’s reserved assets, a windfall of several hundred million euros coming largely from private donations to the Vatican.

From the mouths of their lawyers, Brülhart and Carlino on Saturday defended having always been “loyal” and worked “in the interest of the Holy See”.

The other people who will be judged are Tommaso Di Ruzza, former director of IDA; Cecilia Marogna, nicknamed “The Lady of the Cardinal”, a young Italian consultant to whom the Secretary of State is said to have deposited half a million euros in an account in Slovenia; the investor Raffaele Mincione; the lawyer Nicola Squillace; Fabrice Tirabassi, a former senior secular Vatican official; Yes Gianluigi Torzi, a businessman arrested in May in London.

The investment at the heart of the scandal is a building in London’s upscale Chelsea, 17,000 m2 transformed into around fifty luxury apartments. The first participation in the project took place in 2014 via a Luxembourg fund managed by the Mincione holding.

The opaque financial management, across Switzerland and Luxembourg, pushed the Vatican four years later to put an end to it by buying the entire London building. The price was above its true value.

With other risky investments, the damage to the Vatican would amount to several hundred million euros, according to the Italian press.

Financial reform

In November 2019, Pope Francis admitted to the press the existence of a corruption “scandal” in the Vatican. “We did things that were not clean,” lamented the High Pontiff.

The judgment on the London building “is directly linked to the orientations and the reform of His Holiness Pope Francis in favor of transparency and the consolidation of the Vatican’s finances”, underlined the Holy See.

The Argentine pontiff was elected in 2013 to, among other things, restore order to the Vatican’s finances, an arduous reform which encountered resistance in certain “dicasteries” (ministries) which managed the funds in a very autonomous and not very transparent manner.

In 2017, the Pope discovered that “reforming” the Roman Curia (Vatican government) meant “cleaning the Egyptian sphinx with a toothbrush”.

To this end, it created in 2014, the powerful Ministry of the Economy, cleaned up the Vatican Bank, where 5,000 suspicious accounts were closed in 2015, regulated the auctions of its internal expenses and entrusted the Administration of the Heritage of the Headquarters) with the management of the budgets of the numerous Vatican administrations.

(With information from Reuters and EFE)

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