But do prosecutors really have a case against Becciu?

In his argument July 26, Alessandro Diddi spent the day focused on Becciu, the former sostituto of the secretariat, whose defense Diddi described as "masterpieces of falsification and mystification of reality."

The cardinal, in turn, has declared his "absolute innocence" and himself to be "a faithful servant of the Church" who has "suffered in silence" throughout a process he's called a witch hunt and media smear campaign.

Away from the courtroom hyperbole, though, there is perhaps one thing on which Becciu and Diddi would agree: The case is complicated.

According to the official charge sheet, he is accused of embezzlement and abuse of office, conspiracy, as well as the subornation of witnesses. But how does this break down, and does the evidence add up?

All roads lead through London

According to most media coverage of the trial, the primary focus of the evidence and the charges — including against Cardinal Becciu — is the Secretariat of State's now-infamous purchase of a London building at 60 Sloane Avenue.

But that story, however popular, isn't quite right.

The London deal may be at the center of the trial, but the charges, accusations, and evidence extend back years before the deal was concluded, and well into the months after.

The 2018 acquisition of the building by the secretariat was a messy affair, to put it mildly.

And it was the building's purchase which started the investigation which led to the current trial.

And it was the complicated structuring of the purchase which led to charges of extortion and other crimes for defendants, most notably the businessman Gianluigi Torzi.

But Cardinal Becciu has insisted that he had nothing to do with the purchase of the London building, and that the deal was done after he had left the Secretariat of State in June of 2018 and it was managed by his successor as sostituto, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra.

In that, Becciu has a point. He did not, so far as the available evidence shows, have anything to do with the decision to buy the building outright, or with approving the details which left the Vatican wide open to (alleged) fraud and extortion.

Still, that is only part of the story.

The purchase of the building — which lost the Vatican more than 100 million euros — was part of a hasty settlement as the secretariat severed ties with the financier Raffaele Mincione, with whom it had invested some 200 million euros in 2014.

That initial investment was approved by Becciu, as was its financing, and the unusual way it was recorded on Vatican balance sheets.

And those actions are part of the prosecution case — though the cardinal has insisted he cannot remember much of what he approved, or explain his reasons, even when presented with documents bearing his signature.

And as has been reported since before the trial began, when the newly created Secretariat for the Economy and Office of the Auditor General tried to look through the Secretariat of State's books for a curia-wide audit in 2015-16, it was Becciu who led the resistance to scrutiny.

According to reporting at the time — and later confirmed both by Cardinal George Pell, the first prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy, and Libero Milone, the first auditor general — the secretariat under Becciu's leadership used forbidden accounting practices to effectively hide the whole 200 million euro investment with Mincione from auditors, along with the bank loans used to finance the investment.

Becciu has made several evolving claims in his own defense since.

He has said, at different times, that he never refused to cooperate with Pell and Milone; that Pell and Milone's departments never had the authority to audit the Secretariat of State anyway; and that he did act to shield the specific investments from scrutiny because they were some kind of secret discretionary papal fund outside of Vatican financial laws.

In addition to Pell (who died earlier this year) and Milone's insistence that none of these defenses are true, the plain text of the statutes of both their former departments — issued by Pope Francis — seems clearly to give them total access to and oversight of all Vatican departments and funds, with no exceptions. Read more

• Ed Condon is a co-founder and editor of The Pillar.
• First published in The Pillar.

The investigations targeted broker Gianluigi Torzi who, along with four others, is currently on trial in the Vatican.

The group are allegedly involved in packaging bad debt claims to Italian hospitals and selling them as bond securities with a nominal value of one billion euros.

Torzi, who brokered the Vatican's 2018 purchase of a London development project, is facing trial in the Vatican City State on charges of extortion, embezzlement, fraud and money laundering.

The allegations which led to this week's raids bear a striking similarity to Torzi's previous business dealings involving debt securitisation at other Italian hospitals. There are also alleged links to organised crime and the Vatican's London property deal.

Italian authorities had been investigating whether companies owned by Torzi defrauded Rome's Fatebenefratelli Hospital when they helped convert debts owed to the hospital into securities that could be sold at a diminished value to raise cash for hospital operations.

There are conflicting reports in Italian media about how, exactly, Torzi's companies are believed to have defrauded the hospital.

But generally, they are described as having realised large commissions and exorbitant service fees for their work, while allegedly withholding some funds owed to the hospital.

Torzi has maintained his innocence and, in October 2021, the Vatican announced a rescue plan for the hospital.

Torzi became involved with the Vatican in 2018, as the Secretariat of State sought to separate from its investment manager Raffaele Mincione.

Mincione owned the London property in which the Vatican was investing. Torzi was contracted by the secretariat to broker the final part of the Vatican's purchase for a total cost of some 350 million euros.

According to The Pillar (a catholic media project), Torzi's companies had previously lent Mincione 26 million euros against the value of bank shares which had collapsed in value earlier.

Both men have been charged in Vatican City by prosecutors in the current financial trial.

Sources

Pillar

AP News

From the start of the trial in July, attorneys for the 10 defendants in the case have lamented that evidence, including 53 DVDs of interrogations and wiretaps, gathered by investigators had not been turned over to the defence. In an earlier proceeding, the Vatican judges ordered that the entirety of the material be handed over by Nov 3 while disallowing other parts of the prosecutors' case.

On Wednesday, the defence said the Vatican prosecutors had not released a transcript of investigators' interview with Francis, who in Dec 2018 had a brief meeting at the Vatican with Gianluigi Torzi, the Italian broker who helped the Vatican complete the purchase of a luxury London apartment house. The deal eventually lost the Vatican some $200 million after Torzi allegedly charged the church exorbitantly for his interest in the company that owned the property.

A month earlier, Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, a former official at the Vatican Secretariat of State, had met with Torzi in London to sign two contracts with him. According to prosecutors, the documents were signed "before the issue was brought to the attention of the Secretary of State and the Holy Father."

The contracts gave Torzi 1,000 voting shares in the fund that owned the property. He later asked the Vatican to pay him roughly $17 million to relinquish the shares, an act that Vatican prosecutors now label as extortion.

Initially a suspect of the investigation, Perlasca later offered himself as a witness but prosecutors have not made his role in the trial clear.

While interrogating Perlasca on the contracts he signed and the pope's meeting with Torzi prosecutors referred to their interview with Francis, according to the defence. In a recording of Perlasca's interrogation that the defence played in court, the Vatican prosecutor can be heard saying that they "went to the Holy Father and asked him what happened."

"Monsignor Perlasca was confronted with the declarations made by the Holy Father," said Luigi Pannella, a lawyer for Enrico Crasso, a defendant who managed a significant portion of the Vatican's financial portfolio and is accused of money laundering, extortion and corruption.

According to Pannella, mention of the pope's statement led Perlasca, who "is a priest and tied to the Holy Father by a sacred relationship of obedience and subordination," to change his testimony. Lifting his laptop showing the recording above his head, the lawyer told the judges that Perlasca's face showed "supreme disconcertment" and "shock" upon hearing that his testimony differed from that of the pope.

Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi denied that the pope's words had an effect on the case or Perlasca. "This office never heard the Holy Father on the record," Diddi said, charging that the monsignor was not shocked at the prospect of what the pope said, but "instead he paled when this office was able to refute his statement through documentation."

The prosecutor added that some of the material requested by the defence is still missing because it's part of ongoing investigations unconnected to the trial.

But since Francis was mentioned in Perlasca's interrogation, the defence teams insisted that the transcript of the pope's comments be added to the evidence. "The fact that these declarations by the Holy Father are missing in the data undermines the rights of defence," Panella said.

Throughout the trial, defence lawyers have tried to capitalize on the prosecution's withholding of evidence and what they say is a lack of due process, with some likening the trial to a kangaroo court.

The trial is a key turning point in Francis' attempts to clean up the Vatican's finances and introduce corporate standards of transparency. It is also the first time in memory that a cardinal of the church has been put on trial. Cardinal Angelo Becciu, once the third-highest-ranking prelate in the Vatican, is accused of corruption, money laundering and mishandling the institution's funds, including those collected for the pope's charitable works.

It was Becciu's lawyer, Fabio Viglione, who initially led the charge in Wednesday's proceedings, saying evidence handed over by the prosecutors is incomplete and, in some points, redacted. Viglione called the omissions "a mutilation of the evidence."

"The issue here remains the same," Viglione said. "We want to defend ourselves, and we want all the data and what we need to establish an effective defence." According to the lawyer, the persistent reluctance by prosecutors to relinquish the entirety of the evidence implies the "irreparable nullity" of the trial.

The Vatican judges decided to take time to reflect on the demands made by the defence lawyers and adjourned the trial to Dec 1.

First published By Claire Giangravé , Religion News Service

Republished with permission

Sources

Religion News Service

Reuters

His resignation followed an unscheduled meeting with the pope. Francis told him he had lost his trust and ordered him to step down.

News of Becciu's resignation was followed by reports that Italian businessman Gianluigi Torzi has provided detailed information to investigators in the ongoing Vatican financial scandal.

Torzi was arrested by Vatican investigators in June and charged with "extortion, embezzlement, aggravated fraud and self-laundering,".

After his arrest, he spent three days with Vatican authorities, walking them through details of the case.

Italian authorities are now helping to track several hundred million euros of Vatican funds.

Francis has also appointed an Italian lawyer and professor of commercial law to work as an additional prosecutor in the Vatican City State's court.

The new appointment is fueling expectation that Becciu and several of his former colleagues at the Secretariat of State could face criminal prosecution in Vatican City.

It has also been reported that a brewing company owned by Becciu's brother Mario, received a 1.5 million euro loan.

The loan was provided by Angolan businessman Antonio Mosquito, who has links with the Cardinal and the Secretariat of State.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu served as apostolic nuncio to the African nation from 2001-2009.

In 2012, having moved to Rome as sostituto of the Secretariat of State, he was involved in the secretariat's consideration of a reported $200 million investment in Mosquito's company Falcon Oil. He served in that role for nearly 10 years.

He was made a cardinal and placed in charge of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in 2018.

After vetting the deal for a year, the secretariat decided instead to invest the money with Italian businessman Raffaele Mincione.

That decision led to the controversial purchase of a London building - and which kicked off the current investigation.

Becciu says the money was intended to help children with autism.

The following morning, a story accusing Becciu of using his positions in the curia to funnel money to members of his own family was published.

Becciu's resignation followed more than a year of reporting about various financial scandals involving Becciu and the Holy See's Secretariat of State.

Many of these reports stemmed from the Secretariat's investments through Italian businessman Raffaele Mincione, an associate of Torzi's, including the purchase from him of the London property for hundreds of millions of dollars.

Italian police served a search and seizure warrant on Mincione in July, issued at the request of Vatican prosecutors.

Investigators took away cell phones and tablets for examination in relation to the case.

Mincione has repeatedly denied any wrongdoing.

Lawyers for the Becciu family have lodged official complaints for the "slander and aggravated defamation" of their clients and for "illegal leakage of confidential information and documents" to media.

Since October 2019, investigators in Vatican City have raided several Vatican departments in connection with the London property deal and investments.

Computers and phones were seized and several staff members were suspended.

Source

• Catholic News Agency
• Image: MSN.com

The arrest warrant for Gianluigi Torzi, who had acted as an intermediary for the Holy See in the 2018 purchase of a luxury building in London, was issued last week by the Vatican's civil court.

It has been carrying out a nearly yearlong investigation into the purchase details of a building located on London's Sloane Avenue.

The Vatican says Torzi, who is being held in Vatican custody, faces up to 12 years in prison.

An internal investigation was launched after the Vatican's Secretariat of State in November 2018 sought to withdraw 185 million euros from a Swiss investment fund.

The withdrawal was to help the Vatican regain direct management of a 17,000 m2 London building divided into about 50 luxury apartments.

However, some of the money in the Swiss fund came from the annual Peter's Pence collection. This money is meant to be used among other things, for the operation of the Roman Curia.

Misappropriations were then identified and Pope Francis ordered an investigation.

Several Vatican offices were searched, including that of the Secretariat of State. Several Vatican finance officials were removed from their posts and some were sacked.

The investigation also looked into "lay people close to the Secretariat of State" after secret accounts were discovered in several tax havens.

The Italian press says the Vatican took a first stake in the Sloane Avenue project as early as 2014, via a Luxembourg fund managed by the holding company of the Italian businessman Raffaele Mincione. It would then have made a capital gain.

Poor financial management, via Switzerland and Luxembourg, prompted the Secretariat of State to end its collaboration by buying the whole of the London building and then ceding control of it to Torzi, who was based in London.

The Vatican gendarmerie's incarceration of a non-citizen of the small city-state like the Italian banker, is extremely rare.

It underlines the Holy See's will to put an end to a time when it was at the mercy of unscrupulous financiers and its need to regain donors' confidence.

Donations are one of the primary sources of the Holy See's income along with money generated by the Vatican Museums, which has reduced as a result of the COVID-19 lockdown.

"The best we can do is to be diligent and transparent," said Father Juan Antonio Guerrero, prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy.

"Confidence is gained through rigor, clarity and sobriety, as well as by humbly admitting past mistakes ... We too have relied on people who did not deserve our trust. We are always vulnerable in this area."

Guerrero helped establish the Vatican's recent Code of Public Procurement that reflects the Holy See's will to comply with international standards that follow Catholic social teaching.

Source

• La Croix
• Image: National Catholic Register