An Italian cardinal has been
caught on a police wiretap allegedly claiming he deliberately
kept Pope Francis in the dark about a 30-million-euro financial
move he was planning to make.
Although he is not under investigation and denies all
wrongdoing, Cardinal Gisueppe Versaldi looks set to be
embarrassed by the probe, which is linked to the allegedly
fraudulent financial collapse of a southern Italian nursing-home
chain run by an order of nuns.
Rome prosecutors have asked colleagues in the southern city
of Trani for copies of the case papers, judicial sources said
late Friday.
Police said Friday the wiretap of a conversation between
Cardinal Versaldi and a manager is among those to feature in the
probe into the alleged fraudulent bankruptcy of the Divina
Provvidenza (Divine Providence) chain.
In the conversation, Versaldi allegedly suggests the pope
should not be informed that 30 million euros belonging to Rome's
Bambino Gesù children's hospital and stemming from Italian
public coffers were to be used for the acquisition of the IDI
skin hospital company.
The sum was never eventually used for that or other
financial moves, investigators said.
According to transcripts made available by police, Versaldi
tells the manager: "You have to keep mum about this 30 million
euros".
Bambino Gesù Hospital denied any links to the Divina
Provvidenza investigation.
"Bambino Gesù Hospital categorically denies that funds from
its own budget or from public funding were ever used in the
purchase of the IDI Hospital," said Bambino Gesù Hospital
President Mariella Enoc, who was nominated to her post in
February by the Vatican's Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro
Parolin.
"Not even one euro (of the hospital's money) is taken away
from clinical, research, or organizational activities that
regard the hospital and its patients," Enoc said.
Meanwhile a centre-right Senator who has been linked to
the probe on Friday presented an appeal against an arrest
warrant which an immunity panel in the Italian parliament has
yet to rule on.
A lawyer acting for the chair of the Senate's budget
committee, Antonio Azzollini, presented the request Friday for
the annulment of the arrest warrant.
In the document presented to the Bari warrant review court,
Azzollini's lawyer challenged Puglian prosecutors' assertion
that there is "grave evidence" against the politician from the
New Centre Right (NCD) in relation to the bilking of the funds
used by the Order of Divine Providence for a string of nursing
homes for old people and the mentally ill.
The arrest warrant was passed by judicial authorities to the
upper house June 10 and a special parliamentary panel will
decide in coming days whether to recommend that Azzollini's
parliamentary immunity be stripped, a decision that will have to
be ratified by a parliamentary vote.
Azzollini faces charges of criminal conspiracy for
fraudulent bankruptcy and corruption.
In the probe, on June 10, two nuns were arrested and a
request to arrest Azzolini filed, prompting investigators to
say the case highlighted the progress made by the Vatican Bank
towards full transparency of its formerly opaque affairs.
"The IOR's collaboration was precious," prosecutors told
reporters.
"From today I'm the one in charge here," Azzolini is heard
saying in a wiretap obtained in the case, when he allegedly took
over running the chain.
Azzolini's "reign of terror", investigators said, was
marked by a spate of "wild and totally indiscriminate hirings of
chain staff linked to him".
He was also prone to "vulgar intimidation of the sisters,"
they said, allegedly saying he would "piss" on them if they
ignored his orders.
Azzolini denied making the statements published in the
wiretaps.
The two nuns arrested in the probe in Puglia were among the
most senior members of the Ancelle Congregation of Divine
Providence.
Also arrested were a former director general,
administrators and consultants of the order.
In all as many as 25 people are under investigation on
charges of embezzling funds from the foundation.
Established to give a voice to the voiceless by helping old
people unable to look after themselves, the religious order
"seems to have completely reneged on its founding canons," a
statement by the prosecutor's office in Bari said.
Investigators said the Institute for Religious Works
(IOR), the Vatican Bank, allowed investigators to "close the
circle" in their probe.
Replies supplied by the Holy See bankers allowed
investigators in Puglia to undertake "a more pregnant technical
examination" of financial flows through bank account data in
which assets of the Congregation of Divine Providence had been
hidden, judicial sources said.
Meanwhile it was disclosed that a Socialist MP, Raffaele
Di Gioia, was also among those under investigation in the probe
which appeared to be widening.
Finance police confiscated 32 million euros and a building
that the nuns were planning to turn into a private clinic in
Guidonia in Rome province.
The money and the building were held in the names of
parallel church orders run by nuns from the Divine Providence
congregation.
As much as 350 million euros of the total debts of half a
billion euros run up by the congregation were debts to the
Italian state.
The order also had a secret bank account in which
donations from the faithful were stashed.
Part of the money was used to finance a campaign for the
beatification by the Church of the founder of the order, Don
Uva.
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