NEW YORK – The Vatican court said Wednesday it convicted a cardinal of aggravated fraud and other charges because of his “objectively inexplicable behavior” in paying a so-called intelligence analyst more than half a million euros in Vatican money which she then spent on luxury items and vacations. .

The city-state’s court published 816 pages of written reasons from its December 16 verdicts at the Vatican. “trial of the century”. The two-year trial of 10 people grew out of a 350 million euro ($380 million) investment by the Holy See in a London property, but expanded to include a host of other financial transactions .

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a once-powerful cardinal who was number 3, or “substitute,” in the Vatican secretariat of state, was the most prominent of the nine people convicted. He risk five and a half years in prison after being convicted of embezzlement, fraud and other charges.

He and the eight other accused announced callsjust like the Vatican prosecutor. With the court’s written explanations now filed – almost a year after the convictions were handed down – both parties can elaborate on the grounds of their appeal.

The trial focused on the Vatican Secretariat of State’s participation in a fund to transform a former Harrod’s warehouse into luxury apartments. Prosecutors charged Vatican monsignors and brokers defrauded the Holy See tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions then extorted 15 million euros from the Holy See to cede control of the building.

Becciu was found guilty of embezzlement stemming from the Vatican’s initial investment of 200 million euros in the fund that invested in the London property. The court determined that canon law prohibited using Church property in such a speculative investment.

Becciu was also found guilty of aggravated fraud for his role in paying 575,000 euros in Holy See money to Cecilia Marogna, a self-proclaimed intelligence expert from her native Sardinia. He had said the payments were authorized by Pope Francis as ransom to free a Colombian nun held hostage by Al-Qaida-linked militants in Mali.

The investigation, however, showed that Becciu essentially billed the Vatican twice, with the same amount sent to a British security company that actually has expertise in freeing hostages. The nun was later released, but there is no indication Marogna had anything to do with it, the court noted.

The court, presided over by judge Giuseppe Pignatone, said Becciu never provided a reasonable explanation as to why he paid Marogna the same amount of money, nor why he never asked him for updates. of his alleged efforts to free the nun.

Even when Vatican gendarmes told him that Marogna had instead spent Vatican money on luxury vacations and Prada purchases, Becciu did not file a complaint with prosecutors or keep his distance from Marogna. Instead, they continued to communicate through a family friend.

“An objectively inexplicable behavior, all the more so for someone in the position of the accused, a cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints and for seven years deputy to the Secretariat of State, who has long benefited from the full confidence of the pope,” the court wrote. “Behavior that the defendant 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 too was found guilty and sentenced to three years and nine months in prison.

Most of the written motivations were devoted to deciphering the complicated transactions at the heart of the London agreement. The text also repeated court precedent rejection of defense arguments that the trial itself was fundamentally unfair.

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