(supersedes previous)Finance
police have arrested a senior Catholic prelate on suspicion of
defrauding some 300 people out of a combined total of 30 million
euros, ANSA sources said Wednesday.
The suspect named as Monsignor Patrizio Benvenuti, 64, was
nabbed as he was leaving for the Canaries.
An international warrant is out on a close collaborator of
the monsignor, whom police described as French wheeler-dealer
Christian Ventisette, 54.
Most of the victims were elderly people living abroad, the
sources said.
They transferred money to Benvenuti's Kepha Foundation, but
instead of going to the non-profit's stated humanitarian aims,
the funds were allegedly laundered via a complex mechanism
involving individuals and foreign and Italian companies.
Prosecutors say the prelate and the businessman "organized
and promoted a racketeering organization operating domestically
and abroad aimed at committing various and repeated crimes of
fraud, money laundering, and tax evasion, involving individuals
and companies located in Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg,
Switzerland, and the United States".
The bust was sparked by a nun who used to work with
Benvenuti, who turned to police when she discovered her name had
been linked to financial operations involving hundreds of
thousands of euros, which she knew nothing about.
In the course of the operation, police also seized an
eight-million-euro Renaissance villa belonging to the Kepha
Foundation that Benvenuti used as his private residence, an
850,000-euro archeological site in Sicily belonging to
Ventisette, and other real estate and land worth 670,000 euros.
Benvenuti has served at various levels of the Holy See
ecclesiastic tribunal in the Vatican, and was a military
chaplain at a Navy academy in the small town of Chiavari in
Genoa province.
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