Puigdemont would have requested a meeting with the cardinal accused of corruption in the Vatican

The trial for corruption that is being carried out in the Vatican has reached Catalonia this Thursday.

Thomas Osborne
Thomas Osborne
19 May 2022 Thursday 12:30
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Puigdemont would have requested a meeting with the cardinal accused of corruption in the Vatican

The trial for corruption that is being carried out in the Vatican has reached Catalonia this Thursday. The former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont would have tried to contact Angelo Becciu, the cardinal sitting on the bench for alleged financial irregularities, according to the statement of Cecilia Marogna, an alleged geopolitical expert protected by Becciu who is also being prosecuted for embezzlement.

Marogna has not allowed herself to be questioned for the moment, but her lawyers have delivered a 22-page statement to the Vatican Court today where she refers to her alleged tasks of putting Becciu in contact with intelligence services and institutions. In the note he narrates that, in the period of the 2017 referendum, Puigdemont wrote a letter to request a contact or meeting with Becciu, who was then a substitute for the Secretary of State, in practice number three of the Holy See. "I spoke with the cardinal, who told me that he was available to listen to what was happening in Spain and whether there would be scope for a diplomatic intervention by the Vatican," he says in this statement.

The supposed expert has mentioned this episode to explain the lack of confidence generated by the Italian businessman Piergiorgio Bassi, an apparent lobbyist with strong ties to Russia, a partner in an intelligence and security company based in Switzerland. "Other doubts arose in me about the operational authenticity of Piergiorgio Bassi and his Russian associates when he sent me a letter from the president of Catalonia," she tells the Vatican Court. According to him, Bassi told him that at that time Puigdemont could not travel, so the best thing to do was to organize a video call with Cardinal Becciu. However, Bassi's condition was that the video call take place only in Becciu's private apartment, under the supervision of "a very close collaborator of unknown identity who would go to his house with his computer to use a precise Skype account."

“The request seemed unusual and illogical to me, because both Cardinal Becciu and I had a working Skype account or could open one for the occasion. But Bassi told me that it didn't work that way and that the video call could only be made under these conditions," writes Marogna.

After this, both she and Becciu thought that "something was not clear" and she suggested that Becciu decline the petition, arguing that "considering the critical Spanish political situation", it would be better for Puigdemont to send an official petition to the Secretary of State. to request diplomatic contact with the reference institutions. "Also on that occasion Bassi was upset, telling me that the Russian partners saw in Cardinal Becciu a man without character," he ditches in the note.

Marogna's statement indicates that Bassi's Russian associates, presented as delegates for private diplomatic issues of President Vladimir Putin, were Goloschchapov Konstantin Veniaminovich and Lukjanov Vladimir Nikolayevich. The Italian businessman wanted him to present them to Becciu for specific requests such as one that had to do with the relics of Saint Nicholas of Bari, highly revered in Russia.

All this happens within the framework of the Vatican macro-trial centered on the ruinous investment of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See, the body that had the most power in the Vatican, in a luxury building in the London neighborhood of Chelsea. Prosecutors seek to clarify how the Secretary of State managed its assets, many of them financed by the Pence of Saint Peter, the Vatican entity that collects donations from the faithful that in theory should be allocated to the most disadvantaged.

Cardinal Becciu was ousted by the Pontiff, who withdrew his cardinalate prerogatives and removed him from his position as prefect (minister) of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints for his actions when he was number two of the Secretary of State for the Holy See. Prosecutors believe he wove a web of corruption around him to divert Vatican investments to speculative funds in tax havens, but the cardinal has reiterated his innocence and said he was the victim of an unprecedented "media massacre."

The defendants also include Italian brokers, former heads of the Holy See's financial intelligence unit, and Marogna, dubbed "the cardinal's lady" by the Italian media, who received more than half a million from the Secretariat of State in theory to pay the ransom of missionaries kidnapped in Africa, but according to the indictment the high amount was used for his own personal benefit.


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