VATICAN CITY — A Vatican tribunal on Saturday found a cardinal guilty of embezzlement in one of several verdicts handed down in a complex financial trial that exposed the city-state’s dirty laundry and tested the justice system. He was sentenced to five and a half years in prison.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the first cardinal to be indicted by the Vatican Criminal Court, was cleared of several other charges, and his nine co-defendants were charged with approximately 50 charges brought during the two-and-a-half year trial. The charges received mixed results, with some guilty verdicts and many acquittals. Trial in 2007.
Beciu’s lawyer, Fabio Viglione, said he respected the verdict but planned to appeal.
Prosecutor Alessandro Didi said the result “showed we were right.”
The case focused on a €350 million investment by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State to develop the former Harrods warehouse into luxury apartments.Prosecutors suspect Vatican monk and broker took over the papacy They collected tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions and then extorted 15 million euros to transfer control of the building to the Holy See.
Mr Beciu is charged with embezzlement-related charges in two aspects related to the London Agreement and could face up to seven years in prison.
Ultimately, he was convicted of embezzlement stemming from the Vatican’s original €200 million investment in a fund investing in London real estate. The court ruled that church law prohibits the use of church assets for such speculative investments.
He was also convicted of embezzlement for donating 125,000 euros of Vatican money to a charity run by his brother in Sardinia and for using Vatican money to pay intelligence analysts. The intelligence analyst was convicted of using the money for himself.
The trial raised questions about the rule of law in the city-state and Francis’ rule of law. power as an absolute monarchgiven that he exercised the highest legislative, executive, and judicial powers and exercised them in the way the defense says; endangered a fair trial.
The defense certainly praised Judge Giuseppe Pignatone’s impartiality and said he was able to make their case well. But they lamented what the Vatican’s outdated procedural norms had done to prosecutors. Huge leeway to withhold evidence Otherwise, the investigation continues with little hindrance.
Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican’s editorial director, said the ruling showed the defense had plenty of room to make its case and its rights were respected.
“The outcome of this case is that the judges of the tribunal acted with complete independence, based on documentary evidence and witnesses, and not, of course, on established theories,” he wrote in an editorial for Vatican News. “It tells the story.”
What the prosecutor wanted was 3 to 13 years in prison The Holy See has imposed more than 400 million euros in damages to recover an estimated 200 million euros lost to fraudulent transactions.
Courts ultimately acquitted many of the suspects on many serious charges, including fraud, corruption, and money laundering, often deciding that the crimes simply did not exist.
However, the government nevertheless confiscated 166 million euros from them and ordered the Vatican office to pay 200 million euros in civil damages. One of the defendants, Monsignor Mauro Carlino, Beciu’s former secretary, was completely acquitted.
The trial was initially seen as a sign of Francis’ desire to reform his finances and crack down on allegations of financial misconduct at the Vatican.But there was something about it popular boomerang For the Holy See, it exposed vendettas, espionage, and even ransom payments to Islamic extremists.
Many of the London lawsuits Passage of property Prosecutors allege that a second broker, Gianluigi Torzi, deceived the Vatican by conspiring to secure full control of the building only if the Vatican paid 15 million euros.
For Vatican prosecutors, that amounts to blackmail.for defense—and British judge rejects Vatican request to seize Torzi’s assets — It was a negotiated exit from a legally binding contract.
Ultimately, the court found Torzi guilty of multiple charges, including extortion, and sentenced him to six years in prison. Mincione was convicted of embezzlement of his original investment in London, but was cleared of charges including inflating the cost of the building when the Vatican acquired it.
It is unclear where the suspect will serve his sentence if the conviction is upheld on appeal. The Vatican has a prison, but Torzi’s whereabouts were not immediately known, and it was not clear if or how he would be extradited to another country to serve his sentence.
The former heads of the Vatican’s financial intelligence service, Tommaso di Luzza and René Brüelhart, were cleared of key charges of abuse of power. They were found guilty only of failing to report suspicious transactions involving Mr. Torzi to prosecutors, and each was fined 1,750 euros.
They argue that they cannot tip off the transaction to Vatican prosecutors because Francis launched his own cross-border financial intelligence-gathering operation against Torzi after requesting that the State Department help own the property. Ta.
Vatican official Fabrizio Tirabassi was convicted along with Torzi on charges of extortion and money laundering. Enrico Crasso, a longtime Vatican financial advisor, was found guilty of multiple crimes including embezzlement and sentenced to seven years in prison.
The initial investigation in London produced two other close calls involving star defendant Beciu, once one of Francis’ top advisers and considered a potential papal candidate himself.
Prosecutors accused Beciu of embezzlement for transferring 125,000 euros of Vatican money to a Sardinian charity run by his brother. Becciu claimed that the local bishop requested funds to build a bakery to employ at-risk youth and that the funds remained in the diocese’s coffers.
The court acknowledged that the donations were for charitable purposes, but found him guilty of embezzlement, considering his brother’s role.
Becciu was also accused of paying a Sardinian woman, Cecilia Marogna, for intelligence services. Prosecutors said they traced wire transfers of about 575,000 euros from the Vatican to a Slovenian front company owned by Marogna, and used the money to buy luxury goods and finance vacations.
Beciu said he thought the money would be paid to a British security firm to negotiate the release of Colombian nun Gloria Narváez. taken hostage by Islamic extremists in Mali in 2017.
He said Francis approves donations of up to 1 million euros for nun’s releasethe startling claim that the Vatican was prepared to pay ransoms to al-Qaeda-linked extremists.
The court found both men guilty and sentenced Marogna to three years and nine months in prison.