Vatican, 26 July, 2023 / 8:18 pm (ACI Africa).
The top public prosecutor for the Vatican on Wednesday asked the judge in Cardinal Angelo Becciu’s financial malfeasance trial to serve the embattled prelate with seven years and three months in prison and to confiscate more than $15 million in connection with his alleged mismanagement of Holy See funds.
Becciu has been charged with embezzlement, abuse of office, and several other allegations regarding a series of financial investments that prosecutors claim were meant to benefit his family at the expense of the Vatican.
The trial is the culmination of more than two years of investigation by the Vatican into what happened in and around the Secretariat of State’s 350-million-euro purchase of an investment property in London between 2014 and 2018.
The Vatican maintains that the deal was problematic and designed to defraud the Secretariat of State of millions of euros.
The defendants in the trial have been adamant their actions were above board and that Vatican authorities were in the know.