Vatican City’s highest appellate court has rejected an appeal by the city-state’s chief prosecutor seeking to reopen the case against Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu and other defendants, even after the prosecution secured convictions against them on charges of various financial crimes in 2023. Source: Crux.
A laconic statement from the press office of the Holy See announced the developments on Monday.
The original case turned on a failed $US400 million ($598m) real estate deal in London, in which the Holy See’s Secretariat of State purchased a former Harrod’s warehouse in the Chelsea neighbourhood with a view to turning the property into luxury apartments.
The Vatican eventually sold the property at a $US163m ($143m) loss to extricate itself from the affair.
At the time the ill-fated deal was in the works, Cardinal Becciu was serving as the sostituto in the Secretariat of State – essentially the pope’s chief of staff – and Vatican prosecutors alleged that Cardinal Becciu, other officials and advisors, and a pair of Italian financiers deliberately swindled the Vatican out of the money.
The defendants argued instead that it was the Vatican itself, represented by senior officials such as Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin and Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra – who succeeded Cardinal Becciu as sostituto when Cardinal Becciu went to lead the powerful Congregation for the Causes of Saints – blaming them for the series of poor business decisions which resulted in the losses.
Prosecutor Alessandro Diddi had asked the Court of Cassation of the Vatican City State to let him re-argue a central tenet of his case and prove that the financial crimes and acts of corruption for which he had already secured convictions at first-instance trial were actually part of a unified conspiracy involving the defendants.
Cardinal Becciu and six other defendants have appealed their convictions, and the court hearing the appeals will now only consider whether to reduce the penalties, modify the convictions, or quash the convictions entirely.
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Vatican City high appeal court rejects prosecutor’s appeal in Becciu case (Crux)
