Holy See and corruption: it all comes out in the wash

St. Peter's Cathedral at the Vatican in Rome. Picture: iStock

The latest airing of the Vatican’s dirty laundering is another sad ­expose of the corruption, cover-ups, archaic financial controls, mystery money transfers, perversion of the Catholic Church’s aims and downright criminal behaviour that occurs under cover of the Holy See.

Behaviour that has occurred undetected and largely unpunished for decades.

It is also another injection of life into the deeply held convictions of some that Cardinal ­George Pell was the target and victim of a “villainous and infamous conspiracy”.

Libero Milone’s claims as the first independent auditor appointed to the Vatican finances in his new lawsuit against his former employers do not provide any evidence, as has been claimed in Rome, that money was sent to Australia to damage Pell’s defence against police investigations and charges of sexual abuse.

Infamously, Pell was charged over allegations of sexual abuse, stood trial, was convicted and spent a year in jail but was ultimately, and unanimously, found innocent by the High Court.

Corruption investigators have been told money was sent to Australia to help damage Pell, who people wanted “out of the way” and sacked from his job as Vatican treasurer to clean up the finances and eradicate corruption.

Cardinal Angelo Becciu, an ­opponent of Pell’s reforms and currently on trial for corruption involving Vatican funds and property deals, did authorise more than $2m to be transferred to Australia during the Pell investigation and trials.

Becciu has denied any wrongdoing and claimed the money was for a tech security firm to organise a domain for the Catholic Church, among other explanations.

 

But Milone’s claims set out the vast scope of the corruption Pell was investigating, which provides further evidence as to why he would be the subject of a criminal conspiracy to remove him.

Also, the technical disclosures of Milone about the ability of the Vatican system to manipulate records and hide transfers of international financial transactions demonstrate the ease with which transfers could be hidden or ­disguised.

As an auditor, Milone ­describes this financial ability to hide transactions as the basis for criminal charges in other jurisdictions. The $2m transferred to Melbourne in 2017, exclusively reported in The Australian, remains a “mystery”, although investigators in Rome now believe the money may have been bounced on from Australia to the Middle East.

The fact that the Vatican had the ability to hide and disguise the origin, destination and purpose of international transfers adds plausibility to the claims in Rome that money was sent to Australia to adversely affect Pell’s treatment.

From the beginning of his ­appointment, Pell found missing millions of euros, suspected corruption and developed powerful enemies in an atmosphere where money laundering and dodgy deals amounted to hundreds of millions of euros.