Despite the Holy See tribunal doling out an unprecedented prison sentence to Cardinal Angelo Becciu for embezzlement, the ruling made clear that the judges rejected most of the 487-page indictment.
ADVERTISEMENTThe Vatican's chief prosecutor has appealed a court verdict that largely dismantled his theory of a grand conspiracy to defraud the Holy See of millions of euros but found a cardinal guilty of embezzlement.
Prosecutor Alessandro Diddi filed his appeal this week of the three-judge tribunal's decision in a complicated financial trial that aired the Vatican's dirty laundry and tested its specific legal system.
While the headline from the 16 December verdict focused on Cardinal Angelo Becciu's five-and-a-half-year sentence for embezzlement, the meat of the ruling made clear that the judges rejected most of Diddi's 487-page indictment.
Diddi had accused Becciu and nine other people of dozens of counts of fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, extortion, corruption, abuse of office and witness tampering in connection with the Vatican's bungled investment in a London property.
He sought prison terms of up to 13 years for each of the defendants and €400 million in restitution. In the end, the tribunal headed by Judge Giuseppe Pignatone acquitted one defendant entirely and convicted the others of only a few of the charges while still ordering them to pay €366m in restitution.
Diddi filed a three-page motion Tuesday asking the Vatican appeals court to convict each defendant on the full set of charges he originally laid out, although the tribunal ruled that many of the alleged crimes simply didn't occur.
Former Harrod's warehouse key to the trial
The main focus of the trial involved the Holy See's €350m investment in converting a former Harrod's warehouse into luxury apartments. Diddi alleged brokers and Vatican monsignors fleeced the Holy See of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions and then extorted the Holy See for €15m to cede control of the property.
Becciu, the first cardinal prosecuted by the Vatican criminal tribunal, was convicted of embezzlement involving the original London investment and two tangent cases involving a Sardinian charity run by his brother and the release of Gloria Narvaez, a Colombian nun taken hostage by Islamic militants in Mali in 2017.
The broker who received the €15m payout to cede control of the former Harrod's building, Gianluigi Torzi, was convicted of extortion and other charges.
The Vatican's longtime money manager, Enrico Crasso, was convicted of three charges of the original 21 he faced. But he too plans to appeal, Crasso's lawyer, Luigi Panella, said.
"Contrary to the propaganda spread, the prosecutor's appellate motion reveals that the tribunal to a large extent didn't uphold the accusatory formula," Panella said in an email.
For the three crimes of which Crasso was convicted, the tribunal sentenced him to more than what Diddi had originally sought, "and this somewhat masked the numerous acquittals," Panella said.
The verdict also did some legal gymnastics to make sense of the Vatican's outdated criminal code, based on Italy's 1889 code and the church's canon law, requalifying or combining charges to fit into other ones.
Questions over pope and secretary of state involvement remain
In a post-verdict essay, defence attorney Cataldo Intrieri denounced the "contradictions" of the Vatican legal system and the powers given to prosecutors, which he said resulted in an investigation and trial that were "well distant from those adopted in a state of law."
He lamented that the defence wasn't allowed to call the pope or the Vatican secretary of state as witnesses, even though other testimony and documentation made clear both were involved in and in some cases explicitly approved of, the decisions taken surrounding the London deal.
"The point is that a fair trial isn't just the courtroom debate about evidence, which is certainly a fundamental element, but also an 'equality of arms' in the law to have access to evidence," he wrote in the Linkiesta online daily.
"The true problem and we understood this immediately, is the anomalous concentration of power that the pope, the spiritual head of the Holy See and absolute sovereign of the Vatican state, gave to the office of the prosecutors."
Intriere defended Fabrizio Tirabassi, a former official in the Vatican secretariat of state who received the most serious conviction and stiffest sentences: seven and a half years in prison for embezzlement, extortion and money laundering. He denied wrongdoing.
ADVERTISEMENTBecciu was once one of Francis’ top advisers and himself considered a future papal contender. He said Francis authorised up to €1m to secure Narvaez's release in an astonishing admission that the Vatican was willing to make a ransom payment to free a nun.