Vatican: a cardinal at the heart of an unprecedented financial trial
Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, June 28, 2018 at the Vatican.
© ANDREAS SOLARO / AFP
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The Vatican announced this Saturday the opening of a trial in the context of a vast financial scandal.
Ten people, including a cardinal, will face trial in the world's smallest state court over their alleged involvement in the purchase of a luxury building in London.
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It is a triple unprecedented trial that will open before the Vatican tribunal on July 27.
It is first of all the first time that a cardinal, Giovanni Becciu, former number two of the Secretariat of State will be tried by a tribunal headed by lay people, reports our correspondent in Rome,
Eric Sénanque.
For the cardinal, as for the nine other defendants, the charges are heavy: corruption, abuse of power, money laundering or even extortion.
Unpublished is also the bottom of the file: vertiginous, the most opaque financial arrangements were used for the purchase of this luxurious building in London.
Vatican magistrates have conducted letters rogatory in Switzerland, the Emirates, Jersey and Luxembourg.
By relying on unscrupulous financiers negotiating on its behalf, the Vatican lost tens of millions of euros as the apartments in Chelsea were never built.
Finally, the transparency around this trial is unprecedented: for the first time the Vatican is communicating the substance of the case, the accusations and the chronology of the facts.
Cardinal Becciu, through his lawyers, considered himself to be
"the victim of a conspiracy
".
“
The time for clarification is approaching,
” he explained.
"Having cleaned the Augean stables"
For Odon Vallet, specialist in religions, sending ten people including one of his close collaborator to justice is a courageous act on the part of Pope Francis who thinks that "
his time is limited and that it is time. to act
”.
What Pope Francis is basically saying is: "I will soon no longer be a Pope. But what I would like is to have, as they say, cleaned the Augean stables."
Odon Vallet, specialist in religions
Jelena tomic
The Argentine pope was elected in 2013 to bring order to Vatican finances, a difficult reform that has met with resistance within certain dicasteries (ministries) managing funds in a very autonomous and not very transparent manner.
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