This Saturday, the Vatican Criminal Court sentenced Cardinal Angelo Becciu, 75, to five and a half years in prison, who, along with nine other people, was accused of fraud.
Cardinal Becciu, a former close adviser to Pope Francis, was the highest-ranking Catholic Church official to appear before the Vatican Criminal Court, the city-state’s civil justice system, so far.
The sentence, which also condemns the cardinal to pay a fine of eight thousand euros, is the culmination of a process related to financial transactions of the Holy See that have caused a “hole” of more than 130 million euros in the Vatican coffers. .
The Vatican prosecutor’s office had requested a sentence of seven years and three months in prison for Becciu, as well as a fine of more than ten thousand euros.
“We respect the verdict, but we will not stop filing an appeal,” announced Fabio Vignone, the Italian cardinal’s lawyer.
The case concerns the purchase of a building in central London by the Vatican Secretariat of State, when Becciu was responsible for General Affairs (2011-2018).
It was a building on Sloane Avenue, the former headquarters of the Harrods department store, in the exclusive Chelsea neighborhood.
The prosecution alleged that the building had cost the Holy See around €350 million, but was later sold by the Vatican for £186 million (around €214 million).
Furthermore, the acquisition was used to extort the Vatican and demonstrated a lack of transparency and irregularities in the Holy See’s accounts, the indictment claims.
Source: TSF
