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Cardinal Angelo Becciu (2020)
Photo: Gregorio Borgia / dpa
For the first time, a cardinal has to answer in court in the Vatican for a loss-making real estate deal: the clergyman Angelo Becciu. As of Tuesday, several men and a woman will be in the dock with Becciu. The Vatican judiciary wants to determine what role the accused had played in the financial scandal surrounding a luxury property in London. Several hundred million euros are said to have flowed for the acquisition, commissions and deals at the time. The people from church and lay offices as well as the financial world are accused of abuse of office, money laundering, fraud, embezzlement and corruption, among other things.
The criminal case is one of the largest in the Vatican to date.
Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu was deputy in the State Secretariat of the Vatican, which is said to be involved in the matter.
The State Secretariat, the central administrative authority in the Vatican, appears as a joint plaintiff in the process.
Becciu denied the allegations: "I am the victim of a contrivance to my detriment."
Dismissal "like a bolt from the blue"
Becciu had already resigned last year.
Becciu said at the time that his discharge hit him "like a bolt from the blue".
The Pope said he could no longer trust him.
It was a "misunderstanding" that he had done nothing wrong, said the clergyman.
In the summer of 2019, the Vatican Bank IOR had become suspicious of financial activities, the authorities determined.
Pope Francis removed Cardinal Becciu from his office in the fall after suspicion of financial irregularities.
As a consequence, the latter restructured the financial flows, transferred the task of capital and real estate values to the Apsa property management, thereby depriving the State Secretariat of important responsibilities.
An uproar in the matter is also the accusation that money from the Peterspfennig, the annual worldwide collection for the Vatican, was used for the deals.
lmd / dpa
