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The Vatican has taken the unprecedented step of prosecuting a seated cardinal to face charges of financial corruption related to investments in luxury London property that used Catholic charitable money.
The indictment of Giovanni Angelo Becciu, who until last year was the cardinal overseeing the body in charge of selecting Catholic saints, marks a dramatic acceleration of the drive reform the finances of the Holy See after decades of controversy.
The Vatican said a trial would begin this month marking the first time in modern Catholic history that a cardinal has been charged with financial crimes. Becciu was one of the most powerful men in the Holy See before Pope Francis forced him to resign as senior secretary last year, a process that left Becciu with only a cardinal name.
Four other current or former Vatican officials and five external consultants, including two London-based businessmen Gianluigi Torzi and Raffaele Mincione, are also charged with various charges such as fraud, embezzlement, money laundering and abuse of office.
The charges filed by the Vatican on Saturday, in an investigation in collaboration with the Italian financial police, are related to a series of complicated financial investments supervised by Becciu, including the purchase of a large building in the Chelsea district of London.
Pope Francis has taken a much stronger stance in eliminating financial corruption in the Vatican than his predecessors and has enacted profound reforms in the way the Catholic Church manages its investments.
Prior to his appointment as cardinal in 2018, Becciu was second in command of the Vatican’s powerful internal bureaucracy, the Secretary of State that managed Peter’s Pence charities donated by the faithful to the Catholic Church. Last year Pope Francis, stripped the Secretariat of their control of these funds.
After the announcement of the charges and trial, Becciu said he denied any wrongful offense and congratulated him on the opportunity to erase his name.
“I am the victim of a plot against me and I have been waiting for a long time to know any accusations against me, to allow me to quickly deny them and prove to the world my absolute innocence,” Becciu said in a statement through his lawyers.
The Vatican said it had made the charges following an internal investigation that began in July 2019 and has since involved working with the Italian Financial Police and the Rome Prosecutor’s Office, as well as with requests for assistance from other countries, such as the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Luxembourg.
The Vatican said the investigations “brought to light a vast network of relationships with financial market operators that have generated substantial losses to the Vatican’s finances, as they have also leveraged resources for the Saint’s personal charities.” It seems. “
The central case is the Vatican’s investment in a luxury London development called 60 Sloane Avenue in Chelsea, which was managed by Athena Capital, a Luxembourg-based fund founded by Mincione.
This property was sold in 2018 by Mincione to the Vatican directly in an agreement brokered by Torzi, an associate businessman of Mincione. In this sale, the Vatican alleges that Torzi proceeded to extort money from the Holy See and that the transaction caused heavy losses to the Catholic Church.
Torzi, a London-based Italian businessman who was arrested earlier this year in the UK at the request of Italian and Vatican authorities, has denied any wrongdoing.
Mincione, a former Italian banker living in the UK, has also denied any offense. Last year he initiated lawsuits against the Vatican in English courts, seeking the resolution that he and his companies act at all times correctly and in good faith in their dealings with the Vatican. When contacted by the Financial Times, Mincione and his legal representatives did not respond to any requests for comment.
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