One question left for jailed cardinal Angelo Becciu: did he adversely influence the trial of the late George Pell?

Did the corrupt cardinal Angelo Becciu adversely influence the trial of his nemesis, George Pell? Picture: Getty Images

The rare Vatican charges, trial, conviction and jail sentencing of Cardinal Angelo Becciu have answered a range of questions about fraud, money laundering and corruption at the top of the Catholic Church except for the question of most interest to Australia: Did the corrupt cardinal adversely influence the trial of his nemesis, George Pell?

Of course, Becciu’s jail sentence on the weekend and Pell’s death earlier this year have made even less likely that there will ever be a full investigation or satisfactory conclusion to this Australian angle.

Indeed, even the so-called “mystery funds” sent to Melbourne during Pell’s investi­gation and trials in 2016 and 2017 may have been part of the wider criminal laundering of money around the world.

The alle­gations that Pell’s Australian criminal trials were adversely ­affected were simply not a top priority for the Vatican investigators,

Becciu’s historic sentencing as a cardinal before the Vatican court and several of his corrupt cronies who helped him steal hundreds of millions of Euros from the Vatican and the poorest of the poor established what the late Pell had believed from the moment he was appointed in 2014 to clean up Vatican’s finances. He believed the Vatican was being robbed blind because its fin­ances were archaic, unaudited, disorganised and ripe for fraud.

Within just months of his appointment as the Vatican’s treasurer, he had located more than €1bn of “lost funds” tucked away in obscure and hidden accounts.

Angelo Becciu. Picture: AFP

Pell also believed up to his death last year in Rome that he was the target of corrupt forces using their senior church positions and nefarious contacts to block his efforts to reform the Vatican finances and later to ensnare him in several years of sexual abuse charges and trials, for which he served more than a year in jail and which were ultimately quashed by the High Court.

Pell always believed it; Becciu has always denied it.

What the sentencing of Becciu does prove is that Pell was right about the Vatican being robbed, there was a wide conspiracy of both clerics and non-clerics, Becciu’s closest associates, including one of his brothers and his so-called “niece”, were also involved in international scams and there were attempts to get to witnesses and change the course of an investigation and trial.

In the wider perspective, the belief that Becciu or his associates had organised a campaign against Pell to adversely influence the trial was a lesser matter for a Vatican facing widespread allegations of fraud that centred on a €160m property investment in London.

Even when Vatican investigators looked into $2.3m in “mystery funds” transferred to Australia during the police investigation and trials of Pell, for which no definite explanation has ever been given, their main concern was whether the funds led back to corrupt deals in Europe.

During Becciu’s trial, Pell questioned the suspended cardinal’s testimony and focused on a series of transfers, including money personally sent by Becciu to the then Melbourne tech company Neustar, totalling $2.3m, which has variously been described as being for hi-tech services, new electronic gates for the Vatican embassy in Canberra and even for Pell’s legal defence.

In a statement, Pell said Becciu gave Vatican judges “a spirited defence of his blameless subordinate role in the Vatican finances” during the court hearing but “his account was somewhat incomplete.”

Pell was appointed by Francis to clean up the Vatican finances in 2014 and until 2017 led the Secretariat of the Economy.

Giuseppe Pignatone and Venerando Marano during the verdict of the trial for alleged financial wrongdoing of Senior cardinal Angelo Becciu and nine others in The Vatican. Picture: AFP

Before Victorian police charges truncated Pell’s appointment in 2017, his phone had been bugged and a car was torched outside the Rome apartment of a close aide. A separate telephone tap has also revealed a conversation in which one person tells another “the highway is open to you” after Pell was charged.

Vatican investigators have been told money was sent to Australia to adversely affect the case against the cardinal.

In his statement last year, Pell said the use of a Vatican charity, Peter’s pence, which included allegations of hundreds of thousands of euros being used for luxury items for Becciu’s “niece”, was “bizarre” and “at odds with the official publicity for the fund”.

In a statement to The Australian, Pell said “my main purpose is to comment on Cardinal Becciu’s final remarks on the $2.3m paid to Neustar for the internet domain ‘catholic’ on 4/9/2015”.

“Cardinal Becciu confirmed in Rome previous reports that the $2m he authorised to the office of Neustar, a tech security firm, in Melbourne, Australia, were for the registration of internet domain ‘catholic’,” Pell said.

“No one disputes that the Pontifical Council for Social Communications paid amounts to Neustar Australia for their expensive services and to ICANN, the registry, for the reservation of the title ‘Catholic’ in 2012, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

“Doubts, of course, are removed by facts, by evidence, not assertions.

Unfortunately, I do not have information on payments to Neustar Australia in 2015 beyond $US150,000 the Council for ­Social Communi­cations paid as a deposit.

“It was not my usual practice to sign off on payments from the Secretariat of State.

“My interest is focused on four payments with a value of $2.3m made by the Secretariat of State in 2017 and 2018 to Neustar Australia, two of which with a value of $1.236m were authorised by Monsignor Becciu on 17/5/2017 and 6/6/2018.

“Obviously, these are different payments from those of 11/9/2015, which I allegedly authorised.

“What was the purpose? Where did the money go after Neustar?’’

Since the Vatican court trial began, there have been suggestions to investigators that the $2.3m transfers, first reported in The Australian, did not stay in Australia but were rerouted to the Middle East as part of a wider money-laundering scheme.

There has still been no resolution of where the money went or what it was used for.

Nor is there any evidence it was used in any way to adversely affect the investigations and trials of Pell.

But Becciu’s sentencing has confirmed that Pell was right – and right from the beginning – that the Vatican was like a rich old dowager ripe for being robbed and that there were highly placed personnel in positions of power who were prepared to do the ­robbing and attempt to influence witnesses and trials.

The Pell question that remains is whether he served more than year in jail for something he did not do and had his reputation destroyed as collateral damage for correctly identifying Vatican corruption, which has taken a decade to prove.