Cardinal Angelo Becciu spoke on Italian state television on 18 December to declare his innocence and deny all charges.
He insisted that he was only involved in the early stages of the purchase of the London property in 2018. Already in June 2018, his successor, Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra took over the matter. This is correct but Becciu has been convicted for other things, as PillarCatholic.com summarises.
In 2014, he approved the Secretariat of State's investment of 200 million euros in a highly speculative hedge fund. Becciu accepted a high capital risk without the necessary authorisation. He said during the trial that he "could not remember" why his signatures were on the relevant documents and why he had authorised the financial transactions.
Becciu was the main opponent in the Secretariat of State of the audit of the Vatican's finances carried out by Cardinal Pell in 2015-16. Pell confirmed that Becciu had used forbidden accounting practices to hide the relevant balance sheets for …More