The pope’s former deputy secretary of state and nine others have been found guilty in the Vatican’s biggest financial corruption scandal.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu, Vatican employees and two outside Italian brokers were among 10 defendants described by Vatican prosecutors as “actors in a rotten predatory and lucrative system“.
Becciu, the highest ranking Vatican-based church official to be charged with financial crimes, was sentenced on Saturday to five years and six months in prison.
The charges against the defendants included embezzlement, corruption, abuse of office, fraud, witness tampering and extortion – with the trial revolving mostly around a luxury building in Chelsea.
Becciu was the pope’s chief of staff, serving as a key diplomat between 2011 and 2018.
The two-year-long trial, led by jury president and former anti-mafia prosecutor Giuseppe Pignatone, centered on the management of the funds of the secretariat of state and the sale of a property on London’s Sloane Avenue paid for with donation funds.
The former Harrods showroom was bought for €350m (£300m), while the real value was just €210m (£180m). The botched real estate deal defrauded the Vatican and caused a €140m loss (£120m).
This landmark probe exposed the Vatican’s financial dysfunction and was considered an indication of Pope Francis’ desire to fix the money mismanagement.
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Cardinal Angelo Becciu with the pope in 2021. Pic: AP
Italian journalist Massimiliano Coccia, who first discovered the scandal which led Pope Francis to fire Becciu in 2020, told Sky News this is an unprecedented verdict in Vatican’s history.
Becciu filed a defamation suit against Mr Coccia claiming that his ruined reputation has eliminated his chances of becoming pope.
However, an Italian civil court recently rejected it. Becciu was then forced to pay Coccia’s legal costs.
Becciu is also being probed for conspiracy to commit crime in relation to a social cooperative run by his brother in the cardinal’s native Sardinia.
According to messages intercepted by Italy’s Guardia di Finanza police, Becciu told his family in a chat that Pope Francis wanted him dead days before this trial started.