VATICAN CITY (AP) — A Vatican court on Saturday convicted a cardinal of embezzlement and sentenced him to 5 1/2 years in prison in one of several rulings handed down in a complex financial trial that has exposed the city-state’s dirty laundry and tested its judicial system.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the first cardinal tried by the Vatican’s criminal court, was acquitted of numerous other charges and his nine co-defendants received mixed results of some guilty verdicts and several acquittals on nearly 50 charges brought against them over two and a half years. trial.
Becciu’s lawyer, Fabio Viglione, said he respected the ruling but would appeal it.
Prosecutor Alessandro Didi said the result “shows that we were right.”
The trial focused on the Vatican Secretariat’s investment of 350 million euros in developing the former Harrods warehouse and converting it into luxury apartments. Prosecutors alleged Vatican monks and brokers He usurped the Holy See Tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions and then blackmailed the Holy See for 15 million euros into relinquishing control of the building.
FILE – Cardinal Angelo Becciu speaks to reporters during a news conference in Rome on September 25, 2020. Lawyers for the once-powerful cardinal accused Vatican prosecutors of being “prisoners of their own completely broken theory” in closing arguments of the two-year trial. Becciu is on trial with nine other people in a case focusing on the Vatican’s 350 million euro investment in a London property. (AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia, File)
Becciu was charged with embezzlement charges in two parts of the London deal and faced up to seven years in prison.
Ultimately, he was convicted of embezzlement stemming from the Vatican’s original investment of €200 million in a fund that invested in real estate in London. The court decided that canon law prohibited the use of church assets for such speculative investment.
Raffaele Mincioni, an Italian broker based in London who ran the fund, was also convicted of embezzlement. His lawyers immediately announced an appeal, saying they did not believe the middleman who seized Vatican money from Swiss banks could be convicted and sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison over an “obscure canon law” that Mincioni said he only learned about on Saturday.
Becciu was also convicted of embezzlement for donating €125,000 of Vatican funds to a charity run by his brother in Sardinia and using Vatican funds to pay an intelligence analyst who was in turn convicted of using the funds for herself.
The trial raised questions about the rule of law in the city-state and Francis’ politics. Power as an absolute monarchConsidering that he has supreme legislative, executive and judicial authority and exercises it in the ways the defense says Endangers a fair trial.
Defense lawyers praised Judge Giuseppe Pignatoni’s fairness and said they were able to present their arguments at length. But they lamented the outdated procedural rules imposed by the Vatican on prosecutors Enormous leeway to withhold evidence Otherwise they continue their investigations almost unhindered.
Andrea Tornielli, the Vatican’s editor-in-chief, said the rulings show respect for the rights of the accused.
“The outcome of this trial tells us that, as is true, the judges of the court acted with complete independence based on documentary and witness evidence, not prepared theories,” he wrote in an op-ed for Vatican News.
Plaintiffs have sought – Imprisonment from three to 13 years And compensation of more than 400 million euros to try to recover an estimated 200 million euros they say the Holy See lost in bad deals.
FILE – New Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu changes his Beretta into a skull hat as he receives friends after Consistory at the Vatican on June 28, 2018. Lawyers for the once-powerful cardinal accused Vatican prosecutors of being “prisoners of their own completely broken theory.” “In closing arguments of a two-year trial. Becciu is on trial along with nine other people in a case centering on the Vatican’s 350 million euro investment in a London property. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino, File)
Ultimately, the court acquitted many suspects of several major charges, including fraud, corruption, and money laundering, determining in many cases that the crimes simply did not exist.
However, it ordered the confiscation of 166 million euros from them and the payment of civil damages to the Vatican offices amounting to 200 million euros. One of the accused, Becchio’s former secretary, Monsignor Mauro Carlino, was fully acquitted.
The trial was initially seen as a sign of Francis’ financial reforms and his willingness to crack down on alleged financial crimes at the Vatican. But he had something of Reputation boom For the Holy See, with revelations of vendettas, espionage and even ransom payments to Islamic militants.
Much of the London case depended on… Passage of property From one mediator in London, Mincioni, to another in late 2018. Prosecutors allege that the second mediator, Gianluigi Torzi, deceived the Vatican by maneuvering to secure full control of the building which he only relinquished when the Vatican paid him 15 million euros.
For Vatican prosecutors, this amounted to blackmail. For defense – and The British judge who rejected the Vatican’s requests to seize Torzi’s assets – It was a negotiated exit from a legally binding contract.
The court eventually convicted Torzi of several charges, including extortion, and sentenced him to six years in prison. Mincione was acquitted of, among other things, inflating the cost of the building when the Vatican purchased it.
It was not clear where the suspects would spend their time if the convictions were upheld on appeal. The Vatican has a prison, but Torzi’s whereabouts were not immediately known and it was not clear how or whether other countries would extradite the defendants to serve any sentence.
The former heads of the Vatican’s financial intelligence agency, Tommaso De Rosa and Rene Brulhart, have been acquitted of the main charge of abuse of power. They were only found guilty of failing to report a suspicious transaction involving Torzi to the Public Prosecution Service and were each fined €1,750.
They argued that they could not inform Vatican prosecutors about the deal because they began their cross-border financial information collection process in Torzi after Francis asked them to help the Secretariat of State acquire the property.
A Vatican official, Fabrizio Tirabassi, was convicted of extortion along with Torzi and one count of money laundering. The Vatican’s longtime financial adviser, Enrico Craso, was found guilty of several charges including embezzlement and sentenced to seven years in prison.
The original investigation in London gave rise to two other phenomena involving the star defendant, Becciu, who had once been one of Francis’s senior advisors and himself considered a papal rival.
Prosecutors accused Becciu of embezzlement for sending 125,000 euros in Vatican funds to a charity in Sardinia run by his brother. Becchio argued that the local bishop requested money to build a bakery to employ at-risk youth and that the money remained in the diocese’s coffers.
The court recognized the charitable purposes of the donation, but convicted him of embezzlement, given his brother’s role.
Becciu was also accused of paying a Sardinian woman, Cecilia Marogna, for her intelligence services. Prosecutors traced about 575,000 euros in wire transfers from the Vatican to a Slovenian front company owned by Marogna, and said she used the money to buy luxury goods and finance vacations.
Becciu said he believed the money would go to a British security company to negotiate the release of Gloria Narvaez, a Colombian nun. Hostage by Islamic militants In Mali in 2017.
The court convicted both of them and sentenced Marogna to three years and nine months in prison.
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This version corrects the first name of Becciu’s lawyer to Fabio.
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