Vatican vendettas: Alleged witness manipulation jolts trial
The text message to the Vatican monsignor offered forgiveness along with a threat: “I know everything about you … and I keep it all in my archives,” it read. “I pardon you, Perlasca, but remember, you owe me a favor.”
The message was one of more than 100 newly revealed WhatsApp texts and other correspondence entered into evidence at the Vatican courthouse last week that have jolted a financial crimes trial involving the Holy See's moneylosing investment in a London property.
The texts have cast doubt on the credibility of a key suspect-turned-prosecution witness and raised questions about the integrity of the investigation into the London deal and other transactions.
Together with evidence that a cardinal secretly recorded Pope Francis, they confirmed that a trial originally aimed at highlighting Francis' financial reforms has become a Pandora's Box of unintended revelations about Vatican vendettas and scheming.
The trial in the citystate's criminal tribunal originated in the Holy See's 350 million-euro investment to develop a former warehouse for department store Harrods into luxury apartments.
Prosecutors have accused 10 people in the case, alleging Vatican monsignors and brokers fleeced the Holy See of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions, and then extorted the Holy See of 15 million euros to get full control of the property.
Monsignor Alberto Perlasca initially was among the prime suspects. As the Vatican official who managed the secretariat of state's 600 million-euro asset portfolio, he was intimately involved in the property deal.
But Perlasca changed his story in August 2020 and started cooperating with prosecutors, blaming his deputy and his superior, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, then the No. 2 in the secretariat of state, for the London investment and other questionable expenditures.
Both the deputy and Becciu are on trial. Perlasca is not, and his statements to prosecutors became a source of leads that formed the basis of several charges in the indictment.
When Perlasca testified for the prosecution last week, some of his claims collapsed under defense questioning. Judge Giuseppe Pignatone gave Perlasca until midweek to remember who helped him write his first tell-all memo on Aug. 31, 2020.
And then came a bombshell, courtesy of the text messages that the prosecutor was compelled to introduce into evidence after he received them. They suggested Perlasca wrote the memo implicating his boss after he had received threats and advice from a woman who had an ax to grind against Becciu.
Public relations specialist Francesca Chaouqui previously served on a papal commission tasked
with investigating the Vatican's vast and murky financials. She is known in Vatican circles for her role in the “Vatileaks” scandal of 20152016, when she was convicted of conspiring to leak confidential Vatican documents to journalists and received a 10-month suspended sentence.
According to the texts, Chaouqui nurtured a grudge against Becciu, whom she blamed for allegedly supporting her prosecution. She apparently saw the investigation into the London real estate venture as a chance to settle scores and implicate Becciu in alleged wrongdoing she had uncovered during her commission days.
“I knew that sooner or later the moment would come and I would send you this message,” Chaouqui wrote Perlasca on May 12, 2020. “Because the Lord doesn't allow the good to be humiliated without repair. I pardon you Perlasca, but remember, you owe me a favor.”
Chaouqui didn't say what she wanted. But other messages unveiled in court indicate she persuaded a Perlasca family friend and confidante, Genoveffa Ciferri, that she could help Perlasca avoid prosecution if he followed Chaouqui's advice.
According to Ciferri's texts, the elaborate scheme allegedly unfolded as follows: Ciferri believed Chaouqui when she bragged that she was working handin-hand with Vatican prosecutors, gendarmes and the pope in the criminal investigation. Ciferri wanted to help Perlasca, and so fed him Chaouqui's advice anonymously.
Chaouqui subsequently organized a dinner at a Rome restaurant during which Perlasca tried to extract incriminating information from Becciu. Perlasca was led to believe the Vatican prosecutors had bugged the table and were recording their conversation, though no recording has materialized. He provided them with a detailed memo after the Sept. 6, 2020 meal.