ROME—The Vatican said it indicted Cardinal Giovanni Becciu and nine other individuals in relationship with a costly investment decision in London true estate, the supply of 1 the most important scandals of Pope Francis’s reign.
Cardinal Becciu, who was the 2nd greatest official at the Vatican’s Secretariat of State when it obtained the home, was indicted on charges of embezzlement, abuse of office environment and subornation. His trial will be the initially of a churchman with his rank in Vatican City’s felony court.
Pope Francis requested an investigation in 2019 soon after the Vatican financial institution flagged as suspicious a request by the Secretariat of State for a €150-million mortgage to refinance the acquisition expenses of a making in London’s upscale Chelsea district.
Via a sequence of advanced transactions, the secretariat experienced paid out the equal of much more than $400 million by 2018 for the home, which experienced offered for 50 percent that amount of money six many years earlier, Vatican prosecutors explained to a London court past 12 months. The Vatican was looking for the extradition of a middleman, Gianluigi Torzi, accused of extortion, embezzlement, fraud and money laundering.
In September of past 12 months, Cardinal Becciu renounced his Vatican post and the legal rights of a cardinal, although not his title, at the request of Pope Francis. The Vatican didn’t give a purpose for the shift at that time.
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