Vatican Puts Cardinal in Financial Crime Trial

The Vatican City has taken an unprecedented step to bring a sitting Cardinal to trial to face the charges of financial corruption associated with investing in London’s luxury real estate using Catholic charity.

The indictment of Giovanni Angelo Bechiu, who oversaw the agency responsible for the selection of Catholic saints until last year, shows a dramatic acceleration of Pope Francis. Willingness to reform the finances of the Holy Throne after decades of controversy.

The Vatican City said a trial would begin this month to mark the Cardinal’s face with financial crime charges for the first time in modern Catholic history. Bechiu was one of the most powerful men in the Holy See before Pope Francis forced him to resign from his senior priesthood post last year. In the process, Bechiu became a cardinal by name alone.

He also worked with four other incumbent or former Vatican officials and five external consultants (two London-based businessmen, Gianluigi Torzi) for various crimes such as fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, and office abuse. (Including Raffaele Mincione) have also been charged.

The Vatican’s accusation, which was filed on Saturday in collaboration with the Italian financial police, relates to a series of complex financial investments supervised by Bechiu.

Pope Francis has eradicated financial corruption in the Vatican much more strongly than its predecessor and has enacted radical reforms in the way the Catholic Church manages its investment.

Prior to being appointed Cardinal in 2018, Bechiu was the Deputy Commander of the Vatican’s Powerful Internal Bureaucracy and the Department of State, which managed the so-called Peter’s Pence charitable donations by believers to the Catholic Church. Pope Francis last year, deprived of the secretariat of management of these funds.

After accusations and announcements of the trial, Mr Bechiu said he denied cheating and welcomed the opportunity to reveal his name.

“I am a victim of a conspiracy that hatched against me, and I have been waiting for a long time to know the accusations against me, to immediately deny them, and to be able to prove my absolute innocence to the world. “It was,” Bechiu said in a statement through his lawyer.

The Vatican City was indicted after an internal investigation initiated in July 2019, and since then has been cooperating with the Italian financial police and the Roman public prosecutor’s office, as well as support from other countries, including the United Kingdom, Switzerland and Luxemburg. He said he was involved in the request.

The Vatican said these studies “revealed a vast network of relationships with financial market operators that caused considerable losses to the Vatican’s finances, as well as the resources intended for the Vatican’s personal philanthropy. I used it.“

At the heart of the case was a Vatican investment in London’s luxury real estate development called 60 Sloane Avenue in Chelsea, managed by Athena Capital, a Luxembourg-based fund founded by Mincione.

The property was sold completely from Mincione to the Vatican in 2018 in a transaction mediated by Mincione’s Business Associate, Torgi. With the sale, the Vatican claimed that Torzi began to extort money from the Holy See, and the deal caused enormous losses to the Catholic Church.

Tolji, a London-based businessman arrested in the UK at the request of the Vatican and Italian authorities earlier this year, has denied any misconduct.

Mincione, a former Italian banker living in the UK, also denied cheating. Last year, he filed a proceeding against the Vatican in a British court, seeking a ruling that he and his company always acted appropriately and honestly in dealings with the Vatican. When contacted by the Financial Times, Mincione and his legal representative did not respond to a request for comment.

Article credit: https://eminetra.com/vatican-puts-cardinal-in-financial-crime-trial/624883/