Cardinal Angelo Becciu has been sentenced to 5.5 years in prison by a Vatican court for embezzlement and fraud, in relation to the Vatican’s costly real estate investment scandal. Apart from the conviction, Becciu was imposed an €8,000 fine and prohibited from holding any public office in the Holy See. His co-defendants received varying penalties, including fines and incarcerations of up to seven years, while one co-defendant was acquitted of all charges.
The former Substitute for General Affairs in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, Becciu was accused of involvement in a failed London real estate investment that resulted in a €139 million loss for the Vatican. He was also alleged to have misused Secretariat of State funds intended to help a Columbian nun who had been kidnapped in Mali.
Furthermore, the Vatican charges against Becciu included that he channeled some of this money to an associate who misused it for personal expenditure and provided Secretariat funds to his sibling’s cooperative. Raffaele Mincione and Gianluigi Torzi, two central figures of the plot, were respectively sentenced to 5.5 and 6 years in prison.
While the court’s verdict for Becciu came nearly two years short of the sentencing requested by prosecutors, co-defendants Enrico Crasso and Fabrizio Tirabassi were each given seven-year prison sentences.
Apart from the sentencing, the court directed the confiscation of €219,254,692 from the defendants, plus additional payments for civil damages and legal costs to the Vatican. This comes after the discovery of the scandal, following which, the Vatican established an investment committee to oversee the management of Church funds, and implemented a new investment policy to consolidate all foreign investment accounts under its central bank.