Businessman accuses prelate in 30-million-euro fraud case

(ANSA) - Bolzano, February 10 - A French-Italian wheeler-dealer who was arrested in a 30-million-euro fraud case on Tuesday accused a fellow suspect who is a Catholic prelate of masterminding the scam. Monsignor Patrizio Benvenuti, 64, was nabbed as he was leaving for the Canaries on February 10 while his close collaborator Christian Ventisette, 54, was arrested on an international warrant in Madrid on February 24.
    The pair allegedly defrauded some 300 unsuspecting humanitarian donors - most of them elderly people living abroad - out of a combined total of 30 million euros. The victims 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.
    On Tuesday, Ventisette told a preliminary hearings judge that Benvenuti masterminded the scam, while the monsignor has said the wheeler-dealer "swindled and betrayed" him.