The Vatican Tribunal, at the request of the promoter of justice, today again indicted the four defendants of the trial on the management of the funds of the Secretariat of State , born from the purchase of the London building, for which the documents had been sent back to the same prosecutor's office: I am Monsignor Mauro Carlino, former secretary of Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the financier Raffaele Mincione, the lawyer Nicola Squillace and the Vatican official Fabrizio Tirabassi, for all the alleged crimes.
In the next hearing, scheduled for February 18, the two sections in which the trial was divided will be definitively reunited. The new citations signed by President Giuseppe Pignatone also concern Becciu limited to the accusation of subornation of the key witness Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, who thus also falls into the trial. For the other defendant Tommaso Di Ruzza, former director of the Vatican Anti-Money Laundering Authority (Aif), on the other hand, the dismissal for a hypothesis of embezzlement was decided, while the other charges remain standing.
The adjunct justice promoter Alessandro Diddi explained that "in recent months, in which the defenses of the accused had asked for more information and the interrogations of those who had not been subjected to them in the preliminary phase, none of the defendants came for questioning. We however, we conducted the investigations anyway, depositing seven folders of new investigations ".
THE DEFENSES - The lawyers have advanced further objections of nullity of the procedure due to the still omitted or incomplete filing of the documents by the Office of the promoter of justice.
The lawyer Fabio Viglione, defender of Becciu, argued that there is "a very large part of the electronic documents" that was not delivered in the requested copies. In particular, of a total of 255 computer media seized, 239 were not issued in copies, while none of the copies delivered "can be qualified as a forensic copy" and "all copies are made up of more than partial data".
The lawyer Maria Concetta Marzo, also from the defense of Becciu, explained that today's discussion on this missing filing of documents "motivated the absence of the cardinal, in order not to listen to the contents of the dialogues", in particular with reference to the statements of Monsignor Perlasca. According to the lawyer, "there are points of evidence dealt with in interrogations of which not a single word is reported in the documents delivered".
INTERROGATORY - The reference is to when, in Perlasca's interrogation on November 23, 2020, "a suspected intimate relationship between Cardinal Becciu and Cecilia Marogna is explored". The promoter of justice is heard asking Perlasca about the relationship between the cardinal and the woman and the answer of the questioned is that he knows nothing, "not even a word". But the magistrate insists: "But how does he know nothing? Has Maurizio Crozza ever heard what he hypothesizes in his broadcasts? The cardinal sued L'Espresso and does nothing in Crozza? I would have massacred him, I would have hurt him. , what are you doing, don't you challenge him? ".
But Perlasca confines himself to observing that perhaps with the weekly proceeding by legal means "it was easier". "There is not a single word of this test theme in the report", underlined Marzo, according to which, in any case, both the references to "current rumors" as in the case of Crozza, and the references to the cardinal's "morality" plead the nullity of the "because flawed" transcription process.
The Deputy Pg Diddi explained that he did not know which parts of the documents were missing in the copies delivered, materially made by the Judicial Police, and President Pignatone gave him a deadline until January 31 to check. Regarding the missing transcriptions mentioned, he added, "we tried not to leave traces that could damage the reputation. We tried to protect the morality of the client". The exceptions, for the accusation, "are without any foundation". The Court will decide on them at the next hearing.
(Unioneonline / D)
