VATICAN CITY — The Vatican court declared Wednesday that it convicted a cardinal of aggravated fraud and other charges because of his “objectively inexplicable behavior” in paying more than half a million Vatican euros to a woman who described herself as an intelligence analyst, who then spent that money on luxury items and vacations.
The city-state court released 816 pages of written reasons for its Dec. 16 verdicts in the Vatican’s so-called “trial of the century.” The trial of 10 people, which lasted two years, arose from the Holy See’s 350 million euro ($380 million) investment in a property in London, but was expanded to include other financial movements.
Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a cardinal who was very influential and held the number 3, or “substitute,” position in the Vatican secretariat of state, was the most prominent of the nine convicted. He faces five and a half years in prison after being convicted of embezzlement, fraud and other charges.
He and the eight other defendants have announced appeals, as has the Vatican prosecutor. With the court’s written explanations now submitted — almost a year after the convictions were handed down — both sides can develop the basis for their appeals.
The trial centered on the Vatican secretariat of state’s involvement in a fund to convert a former Harrod’s warehouse into luxury apartments. Prosecutors alleged that Vatican monsignors and intermediaries cheated the Holy See of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions and then extorted the Vatican into paying 15 million euros in exchange for control of the building.
Becciu was convicted of embezzlement stemming from the Vatican’s original €200 million investment in the fund that invested in the London property. The court determined that canon law prohibited using Church assets in such a speculative investment.
Becciu was also convicted of aggravated fraud for his role in the payment of 575,000 euros from the Vatican to a woman from his native Sardinia who presented herself as an intelligence expert, Cecilia Marogna. He had said the payments were authorized by Pope Francis as a ransom to free a Colombian nun held by al-Qaeda-linked militants in Mali.
The investigation showed, however, that Becciu essentially double-billed the Vatican, with the same amount of money sent to a British security firm that did have experience releasing hostages. The nun was later released, but there is no indication that Marogna had anything to do with it, the court noted.
The court, led by Judge Giuseppe Pignatone, said Becciu never provided a reasonable explanation for why he paid Marogna the same amount of money or why he never asked him for updates on his alleged efforts to free the nun.
Even when Vatican gendarmes informed him that Marogna had spent Vatican money on luxury vacations and shopping at Prada, Becciu did not file a complaint with prosecutors or distance himself from Marogna. Instead, they continued to communicate through a family friend.
“An objectively inexplicable behavior, even more so for someone in a position like that of the accused, a cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and for seven years the substitute in the secretariat of State, who for a long period enjoyed the full confidence of the pope,” the court wrote. “A behavior, moreover, that the accused has never explained in any way.”
Marogna, for her part, was tried in absentia and provided contradictory and inconclusive explanations in her written defense, the court said. She was also convicted and sentenced to three years and nine months in prison.
Most of the written motivations were devoted to deciphering the complicated transactions surrounding the London operation. The text also repeated the court’s previous rejection of defense arguments that the trial itself was fundamentally unfair.
