The Vatican’s chief prosecutor appealed a court verdict that largely dismantled his theory of a vast conspiracy to defraud the Holy See of millions of euros, but found a cardinal guilty of embezzlement.
Prosecutor Alessandro Diddi filed his appeal earlier this week, days after the three-judge court issued its verdict in a complicated financial trial that aired the Vatican’s dirty laundry and tested the peculiar legal system of an absolute monarchy in the center of Europe.
While the headline of Saturday’s verdict focused on Cardinal Angelo Becciu’s five-and-a-half-year sentence for embezzlement, the gist of the ruling made clear that the judges rejected most of Diddi’s 487-page indictment.
Diddi had charged Becciu and nine others with dozens of counts of fraud, embezzlement, money laundering, extortion, corruption, abuse of power and witness tampering in connection with the Vatican’s failed investment in a London property.
A landmark Vatican fraud trial involving Cardinal Angelo Becciu and a shady London real estate deal concluded on December 12, 2023 after more than two years. AFP via Getty Images
He had asked for prison sentences of up to 13 years each and €400 million in restitution.
In the end, the court presided over by Judge Giuseppe Pignatone completely acquitted one of the accused and convicted the others only of some of the charges they faced, although it sentenced them to pay some 366 million euros in compensation. restitution.
In the Vatican, as in Italy, prosecutors can appeal verdicts at the same time as defendants.
The Vatican’s chief prosecutor has appealed a court verdict that, while finding a cardinal guilty of embezzlement, largely dismantled his theory of a vast conspiracy to defraud the Holy See of millions of euros. AP
Unlike in Italy, both sides must file appeals even before the trial judge issues his written reasons explaining the verdicts, although they can modify them, the lawyers said.
In this case, Diddi filed a three-page motion on December 19 asking the Vatican appeals court to convict each defendant on the full set of charges he originally brought, even though the court ruled that many of the alleged crimes They just didn’t do it. Does not occur.
The main issue of the trial was the Holy See’s €350 million investment to convert a former Harrod’s warehouse into luxury apartments.
Becciu, 75, a former adviser to Pope Francis who was once considered a papal contender, had denied charges including embezzlement and abuse of office. RICCARDO ANTIMIANI/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock
Diddi alleged Vatican intermediaries and monsignors stripped the Holy See of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions, and then extorted the Holy See for 15 million euros ($16.5 million) to give up control of the property .
Becciu, the first cardinal to be prosecuted by the Vatican’s criminal court, was found guilty of embezzlement involving the original London investment and two tangent cases.
The broker who was paid €15 million to give up control of the building, Gianluigi Torzi, was found guilty of extortion and other charges.
Former Vatican money manager Enrico Crasso was found guilty on three charges of the original 21 he faced.
But he also plans to appeal, his lawyer Luigi Panella said.
“Contrary to widespread propaganda, the prosecutor’s appeal motion reveals that the court largely did not uphold the accusatory formula,” Panella said in an email.
However, even for the three counts on which Crasso was convicted, the court sentenced him to more than Diddi had originally asked for, “and this sort of masked the numerous acquittals,” Panella said.
The verdict also did some legal exercises to make sense of the Vatican’s outdated penal code, based on the 1889 Italian code and the church’s canon law, reclassifying or combining charges to fit others.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu speaks to journalists during a press conference in Rome on September 25, 2020 AP
In his appeal, Diddi challenged the court’s refusal to allow him to use a jailhouse interrogation of London jogger Torzi, because Torzi never subsequently turned up for questioning during the trial.
Torzi refused to return to the Vatican after being jailed for 10 days without charge on a judge’s arrest warrant in 2020 during the investigation and was only released after he wrote a memo to prosecutors.
Diddi was able to stop him thanks to the broad powers granted to the prosecutor’s office in the Vatican legal system, as well as additional powers granted to him by four secret decrees signed by Pope Francis during the investigation that allowed prosecutors to wiretap and detain suspects without the authorization of a judge. order.
Pope Francis attends his annual address to the Roman Curia for the exchange of Christmas greetings at the Apostolic Palace on December 21, 2023 in Vatican City, Vatican. fake images
Defense lawyers have cited those decrees, as well as prosecutors’ ability to conceal evidence from discovery, as evidence that their clients were unable to receive a fair trial in Europe’s only absolute monarchy, where Francis exercises legislative power. , executive and supreme judicial, and used them for the investigation.
In an essay after the verdict, defense lawyer Cataldo Intrieri denounced the “contradictions” of the Vatican legal system and the powers granted to prosecutors, which he said resulted in an investigation and trial that were “far removed from those adopted in a rule of law”. .”
“The point is that a fair trial is not only the judicial debate on the evidence, which is undoubtedly a fundamental element, but also an ‘equality of arms’ in the law to have access to the evidence,” he wrote in the online newspaper Linkiesta. .
“The real problem, and we understood it immediately, is the anomalous concentration of power that the Pope, spiritual head of the Holy See and absolute sovereign of the Vatican State, gave to the prosecutors’ office.”
Intriere defended Fabrizio Tirabassi, a former Vatican secretariat of state official who received the harshest sentence, 7 and a half years in prison for convictions of embezzlement, extortion and money laundering. He denied any wrongdoing; Other defense attorneys also announced they would appeal.
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Source: vtt.edu.vn