Vatican Prosecutor Seeks 7 Years In Jail For Cardinal, Confiscation Of $460 Million From 10 People

VATICAN CITY — To make up for bad investments and financial losses over the past ten years, the Vatican prosecutor requested that a court convict ten people, including a cardinal, of a variety of financial crimes, sentence them to three to 13 years in prison, and order the confiscation of about 415 million euros ($460 million).

Alessandro Diddi, the prosecutor, requested a verdict and sentencing after six days of combative closing arguments. Following a break for the summer, the defense and civil parties in the “trial of the century” at the Vatican will present their closing arguments. Judge Giuseppe Pignatone’s court is anticipated to issue a decision before the end of the year.

Diddi cited the “many crimes against the patrimony of the Holy See” as the basis for his significant requests for prison time, fines, and asset seizure. His estimates for the total losses are between 139 million and 189 million euros ($154 million and $210 million).

He claimed that no one had yet offered to repair the damage. These are wealthy individuals.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a former papal candidate and the first cardinal to go on trial in the Vatican criminal court, was implicated in two other tangents of the lengthy trial, which began with the Vatican’s $385 million ($350 million) investment in a luxurious London apartment.

One concerned accusation. The first involved allegations that Becciu used some 575,000 euros ($635,000) in Vatican funds to double pay a self-described security analyst ransom fees to help free a nun held hostage by al-Qaida-linked militants in Mali. The second involved claims that Becciu used some 125,000 euros ($138,000) in Vatican money to donate to a Sardinian charity run by his brother.

To make up for bad investments and financial losses over the past ten years, the Vatican prosecutor requested that a court convict ten people, including a cardinal, of a variety of financial crimes.

Diddi requested that Becciu be found guilty, given a prison term of seven years and three months, barred from ever having a position of authority in the Vatican, fined 10,329 euros ($11,438) and that 14 million euros ($15.5 million) be forfeited. He argued that Becciu’s “behavior” throughout the trial warranted a sentence higher than the maximum permitted by the Vatican. During his closing remarks, Diddi charged Becciu with creating a “strategy of attacks” against the prosecutor’s office.

Becciu hasn’t missed many hearings during the two-year trial, which is unusual for defendants, and he’s spoken in court on multiple occasions on the spur of the moment. But he has consistently affirmed his innocence and has done so in public releases following the majority of sessions.

He and the other nine defendants in the case have vehemently defended their innocence and claimed that the prosecution had denied them fundamental protections enjoyed by the defense in other nations.

Becciu should be declared innocent, said his attorneys Maria Concetta Marzo and Fabio Viglione after the trial, adding that he had always behaved as a “loyal servant of the church.”

They said, “not even one day would be a fair sentence.”

Although certain bank accounts have been frozen, the request for about 415 million euros in assets to be ordered taken from the defendants, together with another 1.5 million euros ($1.6 million) from four of their companies, was not based on the defendants’ known holdings. Instead, they were based on Diddi’s estimation of the harm that each claimed act would have caused to the Holy See.

SOURCE – (AP)