Cardinal guilty of mass fraud in Vatican ‘trial of the century’

Cardinal Becciu was barred from holding any Vatican office and fined €8000 ($13,000).

The trial, a hodgepodge of charges heard over a marathon of 86 courtroom hearings, offered an unusual glimpse into the murky world of Vatican finances and Pope Francis’s campaign for accountability – even, critics argued, at the cost of due process.

Eight of Cardinal Becciu’s co-defendants – Vatican officials, Italian business executives, consultants and brokers – were found guilty of financial crimes or abuse of office. A ninth was acquitted of all charges.

But the star defendant was Cardinal Becciu, a papal confidant before a surprise 2020 meeting during which Francis dramatically confronted him with the accusations against him.

In response, Cardinal Becciu resigned as head of the Vatican department that leads the canonisation process. Pope Francis stripped him of his privileges as cardinal before any finding of guilt. Later, some of those rights were unofficially reinstated.

‘Kicking a hornets’ nest’

The court ordered the guilty to pay the Vatican more than $US200 million ($298 million) in restitution.

The Vatican, however, also emerges worse for wear, with new questions raised about the effectiveness and fairness of its legal system. The prosecution, portrayed by church leaders as an exercise in transparency, appeared to backfire in key ways, bringing unwanted attention to the intrigue, infighting and ineptitude at heart of the Holy See.

“The pope ended up kicking a hornets’ nest,” said Giovanni Maria Vian, a former editor of the Vatican newspaper.

The sweeping investigation was prompted by a bad Vatican investment in a large London property that led to massive losses. As prosecutors dug, they discovered transfers of €200 million approved by Cardinal Becciu in 2013 and 2014 and wired in connection to the London deal. The court found that the transactions were embezzlement.

Other senior Vatican officials who signed off on the London deal were never indicted, and the pope had been apprised of it.

Cardinal Becciu was also found guilty of illegally funnelling €125,000 to a Sardinian charity run by his brother, and transferring €570,000 to Cecilia Marogna, a Sardinian woman with a humanitarian organisation in Slovenia who, Cardinal Becciu said, was supposed to help free a kidnapped nun.

A lawyer for Cardinal Becciu rejected the verdict.

“We’re certain that the proceedings have proven the cardinal’s innocence,” Fabio Viglione said.

Mr Viglione insisted Cardinal Becciu had always acted in “agreement with his superiors”.

“We aren’t giving up,” Mr Viglione said.

Wiretapping powers

Before the trial, Pope Francis approved secret edicts aimed at empowering prosecutors, including one that allowed investigators to engage in wiretapping. Supporters said the pope was increasing transparency; critics called it overreach by a man who rules Vatican City as an absolute monarch.

“We were told we were incompetent and ignorant,” said Alessandro Diddi, who led the prosecution. “They said all sorts of things. But in reality, the end result proved us right.”

A pope elected with a mandate to reform the Roman Curia, the opaque bureaucracy that runs Vatican City, was seen as having made strides towards improving financial transparency. The Vatican bank, long tainted by secretive accounting and money laundering scandals, underwent a cleanup during the past decade.

Pope Francis has also required Vatican officials to sign pledges declaring that they have no assets in tax havens and banned employees from accepting gifts worth more than $US50.

The Becciu case “says a lot about the pope’s will – theatrical and spectacular – to clean house”, said Italian journalist Emiliano Fittipaldi, a noted Vatican watcher. “Becciu became a sort of symbol, or a scapegoat ... of a system that had to be dealt with at last.”

Cardinal Becciu, who served at one time as de facto chief of staff of the Vatican’s secretariat of state, travelled frequently with Pope Francis and was seen as one of the few men within the Holy See who could knock freely on the pope’s door.

During his time in that post, the secretariat invested in a luxury building on London’s fashionable Sloane Avenue through an Italian financier. The property once served as warehouses for the Harrods department store.

With upgrades, the Vatican was supposed to make a mint. Instead, it turned out that the property had been radically overvalued. It was sold last year at a $US175 million loss.

But before that, attempts by the secretariat to refinance a loan through the Vatican bank set off alarm bells that got back to the pope and triggered the broader investigation.

Washington Post