On Saturday, December 16, Cardinal Angelo Becciu became the most senior Vatican official ever to be tried and convicted in the Vatican court. The 75-year-old Cardinal was convicted of embezzlement, abuse of office, and subornation - receiving a sentence of 5 and a half years on top of mandated payments he and associates must repay to the Vatican.
In 2020, Pope Francis asked Becciu to step down from the Secretariat of State role, masked as a resignation. Resignations of senior officials are practically never done within the Vatican. The Pope encouraged Becciu’s leave after the Italian media exposed the ongoing investigation that examined the Cardinal’s shady financial dealings.
Becciu (assisted by other defendants) used church funds to invest in a luxury London Building on Sloane Avenue for $364 million - a deal that the Pope seemingly knew about, as he was involved in a meeting with a broker named Torzi regarding the property. It has yet to be clarified how much the Pope genuinely knew about the investment.
Aside from the London property, Becciu gave out church funds to close associates. He provided donations to a charity run by his brother and around $600,000 to a woman he hired named Cecilia Marogna. Becciu allegedly hired Marogna as a consultant who would facilitate efforts to free a captive nun in Mali. Yet Marogna reportedly had spent the funds on luxury travel and goods. Marogna was sentenced to 3 and a half years. All defendants who faced charges related to Becciu's dealings faced some form of punishment, whether jail time or a fine. The only individual to be acquitted was a former official at the Vatican Secretariat of State named Mauro Carlino.
Cardinal Becciu’s fraud lost the Vatican millions in its donation funds. The Vatican has been actively participating in the European Moneyval process, a monitoring body that aims to police money laundering and the financing of terrorism more effectively. As the Vatican continues to work with Moneyval, it may become more commonplace to see cases related to financial crime come to light.
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