George Pell: Victorian corruption body chasing Vatican’s mysterious $2m cash transfers to Australia

Vatican uncovers four cash transfers to Australia totalling over $2m, almost double the amount first thought.

Pope Francis, left, with Cardinal George Pell at the Vatican this month. Picture: AFP

Anti-corruption authorities in Victoria will look into money wired from the Vatican to Aus­tralia and allegedly connected to Cardinal George Pell’s trial after receiving information about the matter from federal police.

Separately, The Australian can reveal that Vatican prosecutors investigating unauthorised financial transfers have been given details of more than $2m wired to Australia between February 2017 and June 2018 — almost double the $1.1m reported by Italian newspapers and the Times of London.

There were four transactions in that period, the first for more than €250,000 from the Vatican’s ­secretariat of state in February 2017, according to documents being considered by Vatican ­investigators.

The second came from the secretariat in May 2017, while the third and fourth totalled more than €800,000 and were sent in December 2017 and June 2018.

In a statement on Wednesday, the Australian Federal Police said it had “received information from Austrac on this matter” and was “undertaking a review of the ­relevant information”. “The AFP has concurrently referred aspects of this matter to the Victorian ­Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission,” the AFP statement reads.

Austrac, Australia’s financial intelligence agency that investigated money laundering and organised crime, confirmed earlier this week that it had passed information to the AFP and to Victoria Police for further investigation.

At the heart of the Vatican’s ­investigation is Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, who was dismissed from his high-ranking position running the Congregation for the Causes of Saints in September after being linked to the fraud probe.

Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu. Picture: AFP

Cardinal Becciu, who has denied all wrongdoing, was the deputy secretary of state until 2018 and had a well-known rivalry with Cardinal Pell when the latter was appointed as the head of Vatican finances.

Italian newspapers La Repubblica and Corriere della Sera have reported that Vatican investi­gators were told that money was sent to Australia to help the case against Cardinal Pell, a claim yet to be substantiated.

In an earlier statement, Cardinal Becciu said: “I categorically deny interfering in any way in the trial of Cardinal Pell.”

Cardinal Pell was charged in June 2017 with a series of sexual ­assault offences.

He was acquitted of the charges by the High Court in April this year.

The transfer details given to the investigators and obtained by The Australian include references to Cardinal Becciu.

They also include references to Neustart Australia Pty Ltd, a ­company that is linked to an American technology firm.

The Vatican investigation is also looking into the purchase of a $363m London property, while a 39-year-old woman working for Cardinal Becciu was arrested last week over allegations of unauthorised payments in Slovenia.

Apart from Cardinal Becciu’s sacking and the arrest in Milan, five senior Vatican police, auditors and financiers have been fired or suspended and a money broker has been arrested and charged with “embezzlement, money laundering and extortion” in relation to the London property.

Robert Richter QC, the barrister who led Cardinal Pell’s defence, has previously called for Australian authorities to investigate allegations that money transferred from the Vatican was being used to influence the case against his client.

The Pope appointed Cardinal Pell to oversee Vatican finances in 2014. The former archbishop of Sydney launched an audit of those finances, led by an external accounting company but was overruled by Cardinal Becciu.

Cardinal Pell, in 2014, wrote in Britain’s Catholic Herald Magazine that he had discovered “some hundreds of millions of euros were tucked away … and did not appear on the balance sheet”, suggesting some departments had long had “an almost free hand”.