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The full report into partying at 10 Downing Street, under Boris Johnson's leadership, during the Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, when such gatherings were illegal. Johnson misled parliament when he stated that there were no such parties and that all the rules were followed at all times.

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Vatican Financial Abuse News - Pell Gets His Revenge As the Stink of Corruption Increases

Cardinal Becciu
Gave a "somewhat incomplete" testimony to the Vatican court where he is accused of embezzlement.

Cardinal Pell highlights 'somewhat incomplete' account given by Cardinal Becciu at Vatican finance trial | Catholic News Agency

There was no hint of that alleged Christian love and forgiveness in the Vatican the other day when Cardinal Pell, former financial controller at the Vatican, put the boot in to Cardinal Becciu, once his detractor in his attempts to reorganise and regularise the Vatican's Byzantine finances, who is now on trial in the Vatican, charged with embezzlement.

In his testimony to the court, Pell accused Becciu of making a "somewhat incomplete" testimony - polite code for lying.

Regular readers may recall how Pell was originally brought in to clean up the Vatican's finances when the Vatican Bank was found to be laundering very large sums of money for organised crime under cover of the diplomatic immunity endowed on the Vatican as an independent state in its own right. The Vatican was reputedly on the verge of bankruptcy, not even having enough funds to pay for its day to day activities.

During the course of his investigations, Pell found that heads of departments in the Vatican had control of secret slush funds running into hundreds of millions of Euros, accountable only to them with no proper records of where the money came from or what it was spent on. When put under Pell's control, they restored the Vatican's finances to good health but in the course of this, Pell made many powerful enemies who resented being accountable and not have vast resources of their own to spend as they wished. One of these was Cardinal Becciu, who as sostituto of the Secretariat of State was effectively Pope Francis Chief of Staff.

Pell eventually ran into difficulties of his own when allegations of his involvement in the sexual abuse of minors began to circulate in Australia where he had been the senior Catholic cleric. At Pope Francis' insistence he returned to Australia to face charges of which he was initially convicted and given a custodial sentence, only to have the convictions quashed by the Australian Supreme Court on a technicality. Before he left Rome, Pell had signed up auditors PriceWaterhouseCoopers, to audit the Vatican's finances. Immediately on Pell's departure to Australia, Becciu celebrated by, for reasons which he has never satisfactorily explained, summarily cancelling the contract with PriceWaterhouseCoopers. Again for reason never explained, the Vatican's own internal auditor, Libero Milone, also resigned, so the Vatican accounts remained unaudited.

The reasons for this cancellation soon began to emerge however when Becciu began using a fund known as "Peters' Pence", which is donated to by Catholics in an annual fund-raising event in the belief that it is for the Pope to use for charitable purposes, for donations to, for example, his brother's Sardinia-based ‘refugee charity’, and to bail out a private hospital in Rome where his niece had recently been taken onto the staff, which was facing financial difficulties, and to pay €500,000 to a 'security advisor', Cecilia Marogna, known in the Italian press as “the cardinal’s lady”. Marogna was subsequently arrested in Milan and charged with embezzlement.

Becciu also invested heavily in a property deal in London which was to be his eventual downfall. According to a report in the online Catholic news magazine, The Crux:

The deal was brokered in 2014, while Becciu was the sostituto, through an Italian financier and drawing upon funds collected by “Peter’s Pence,” an annual appeal directed to Catholics around the world as a way to support the pope’s activity, especially his charitable works. The original deal was for 50 percent of the London property, but the Secretariat of State eventually soured on its relationship with the first financier and planned to purchase the rest of the property with the aid of another.

The Secretariat of State appealed to the Institute for the Works of Religion, the so-called “Vatican bank,” for a loan to finance that transaction, which triggered an internal investigation. In October 2019, Pope Francis authorized raids at Secretary of State as well as the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority (AIF), which monitors for suspicious financial transactions, and seven officials were either suspended or fired along with Becciu who was reported to have 'resigned' suddenly.

Not only did Becciu have to approve the deal, but he’s been accused of attempting to disguise the loans it required by cancelling them out on Vatican balance sheets against the value of the property, a practice prohibited by general accounting norms and specifically forbidden by legislation decreed by Pope Francis in 2014.

The upshot was that the businessman Raffaele Mincione, the owner of the London property in question - the former Harrods shop in Chelsea - was also charged with money-laundering and embezzlement, as was Gianluigi Torzi who had been enlisted to help push through the deal. He was also charged with extortion. Readers may recall how last April, Torzi successfully applied to Southwark Crown Court to have a freeze on his bank accounts lifted. Judge Tony Baumgartner cited the lies and inconsistencies in statements from Vatican officials as his reason for unfreezing the account. The Vatican subsequently applied to have Torizi extradited from the UK to face charges of embezzlement.

However, according to the Italian magazine, Il Messaggero at the time, Becciu's sacking was not over possible misuse of Vatican money in the London purchase, but over allegations of embezzlement, again involving the "Peter's Pence" slush fund, but this time in the form of a 'gift' of €100,000 to a charity run by Becciu's brother in Sardinia. The charity's official purpose it to help refugees, but the money appears to be unused and sitting in the charity's banks account (according to Il Messaggero).

Now the plot has thickened with Pell's testimony. The issue now is over Becciu's account of the payment of $AU 2.3 million [$1.6 million] to the Australian firm, Neustar, allegedly for the rights to the Internet domain name ‘.catholic’, supposedly from the Vatican Council for Social Communications, but Pell raised the question whether this was from that council or from the Secretariat of State. The suspicion now is that it may have been a device for channelling money to pay for Pell's defence in his struggle with the law over the allegations of child sexual abuse.

The murky world of Vatican finances continues to give off the noxious stink of corruption as yet more bubbles burst on the surface of that stinking cesspit in the heart of Rome.

Catholic Fraud News - Cardinal Becciu's Defence Team Accuse Pope Francis of Breaking the Vatican Laws!

Cardinal Angelo Becciu talking to journalists during a news conference in Rome. Defence lawyers are questioning the legitimacy of the Vatican tribunal where 10 people are on trial, including Becciu, on finance-related charges, arguing their clients can’t get a fair trial in an absolute monarchy where the pope has already intervened in the case and where prosecutors have failed to turn over key pieces of evidence.

Credit: AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia

Cardinal Becciu laments 'humiliation' after police raids tied to Vatican financial trial

Using a form of reasoning of which any Byzantine lawyer would be proud, the defence team for Enrico Crasso, one of those charged alongside (former) Cardinal Angelo Becciu with embezzlement, have petitioned the Vatican judges hearing the case against him to rule that the trial should be stopped and all charges rescinded because Pope Francis violated the Vatican's own legal system.

Their argument is that in exercising his right, as absolute ruler and head of the Vatican City state to issue four 'resctipta' to firstly allow the case to be brought against Becciu and to give prosecutors leeway in their treatment of witnesses and the defendants, to circumvent the archaic and convoluted procedures behind which the defendants in the case were hiding, Pope Francis has violated the Vatican's Legal system, so a fair trial under that system is now impossible. In effect, so the argument goes, Pope Francis has reduced the Vatican City to a lawless state.

Readers of this blog may remember how (former) Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, number three in the Vatican as Chief of Staff of the Vatican's Secretariate of State, was summarily sacked (or in Vatican terms, 'resigned his rights as a cardinal') and accused of embezzling Vatican funds in connection with a $225 million property deal in London in 2014.

As I reported at the time:

Another Stink Rising from the Vatican Cesspit

Former Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, now under indictment in the Vatican for bribery, abuse of office and embezzlement.

Vatican indicts cardinal and nine others connected to financial scandal.

The murky world of Vatican finances is to be brought under the spotlight again towards the end of July when a Vatican tribunal begins hearing charges brought against former cardinal and powerful chief of staff of the Vatican secretariat of state, Giovanni Angelo Becciu and nine other business associates and Vatican officials are facing corruption charges in connection with a $225 million property deal in London in 2014.

The corruption charges relate to the use of the Vatican slush fund known as "Peter's Pence", which is the recipient of charitable donations throughout the Catholic world and which is supposed to be used by the Pope for charitable works. As former effective number 2 in the Vatican, Becciu had access to this largely unregulated account. I appears that he, like so many Vatican officials before him with access to large, unregulated slush funds, couldn't resist the temptation to plunge his grubby hands deep into the coffer.

Criminal Trump Resorts to Mafia-Like Threats to Try to Steal the Election

Trump pressures Georgia's Raffensperger to overturn his defeat in extraordinary call - The Washington Post

The clearest evidence yet that the only electoral fraud being attempted in the USA is being orchestrated by President-reject Donald J. Trump is revealed in a leaked recording of an hour-long telephone call in which Trump alternately begged then threatened Georgia's secretary of state and fellow Republican, Brad Raffensperger to falsify the November election result for the state by plucking imaginary votes from thin air and awarding them to Trump.

This attempt to interfere in an election and falsify the result is a clear violation of Georgia state law and carries a three-year prison sentence on conviction. It marks a low point in Desperate Don's campaign to overturn the November election, which he lost both in the popular vote (for a record second time) and in the Electoral College, in which he lost to Biden by the same margin that he described as a 'landslide' wehen he beat Clinton by it in 2016.