Corruption in the Vatican | Scandals | The Pope | Head of Catholic Church | Holy See

[Music] i went into the vatican for the first time on march 9th 1993 it was a great thrill i have always visited my clients but to go to vatican for a catholic is something very important [Music] obviously all my friends knew that for many years i had been managing and when they saw me they used to call me the banker of god it was a witty joke of course which alas today i'm paying in a truly brutal way thank you [Music] mia copa corruption in the vatican [Music] can i take it off thank you [Music]

yesterday until two minutes after six i felt i was a friend of the pope a faithful executor of the pope fedex then here is the pope telling me that he no longer trusts me [Music] probably the pope could not have imagined what kind of scandals such an investigation could trigger an acquisition of a large building in central london is the most serious financial scandal of the last 30 years it's a sort of vatican gate in which francis has decided at least apparently he would answer to no one it's a scandal they've done things that don't

towards the beginning of october 2019 there were three lines that very subsequently said that the vatican gender marie had carried out a series of searches in the office of the secretariat of state being the office closest to the pope we could tell that an earth-shaking investigation had begun that obviously such an action couldn't happen decided in the vatican without the endorsement and approval of pope francis it was the internal auditor who said there was a bad thing here he came to me and i asked him if he was he showed me the numbers and asked

me what he should do there is vatican justice go and report it to the promoter of justice the promoter of justice asked me for permission to the searches [Music] what we are going to tell you is a story set in the operational heart of the vatican the ministry closest to the pope the secretariat of state that goes all the way to switzerland to clarify this intricate story we decided to resort to fictional reconstructions with actors [Music] it is an investigation that sees at the center of a handful of financers and senior pre-lights suspected by the

vatican justice of having implemented a criminal plan aimed at plundering the vatican alcovers [Music] i received a phone call from the secretary of state monsignor angelo bichu wanted to speak to me to entrust me with a particular task he told me i have a very dear friend who owns a right to an oil field in angola in angola at the time there was talk of the largest oil field ever discovered in africa about 180 000 barrels a day something huge extractions for 25 years they asked me for an opinion for me it was an absolute

novelty because i have always been involved in finance in countries the trustee is a central figure in this investigation that for months has captured the interest of the major national newspapers and once again it casts a bad light on the financial center of casino for over 20 years crusoe has been the external fund manager of the secretariat of state on behalf of several banks most recently for credit suisse in 2014 he moved from rome to lugano to open his own trust company the former banker agreed to tell us in a long interview his side of

the story this is a trust certificate some golf cups here and there i won a rotary cup the story began in 2013 when monsignor pichu contacted him for an investment in the oil sector you had to assess the value of this deal but was an investment in the oil ethically sustainable that's a good question however for me if an institution has an investment proposal i assume that on their part this aspect has already been taken into consideration how much was the vatican supposed to invest they talked about 200 million dollars the creator of this investment

at the time held the position of substitute for general affairs that is the deputy of the head of the secretariat of state cardinal parolin he was the third of the vatican hierarchy [Music] the secretariat of state has a treasury of 650 million euros which derives in part from a fund called the paul's sixth fund for a third and the other two thirds from the fund of peter's pence peter's pins which is worth around 400 million euros is instead deriving from all the charity that is given directly to the pontiff by the faithful from all over

the world the secretariat of state should use the money from peter's pence to provide charity for the poorest also for the management of the universal church peter's pence is truly as if it were a huge elms box inside a church it's sort of an atm this is a very important availability because it allows you to always have fresh money to invest not initially subjected to a control constrained by the ior and it is precisely part of the money from the peter's pence the result of the offerings of the faithful to the pope bound to support

the church and the poorest of the poor that by the will of the cardinal issue was to be invested in an oil well in angola for the purple magistrates this is the first crime hypothesized using funds tied to charitable works for speculative investment an accusation that also affected enrico crosso who allegedly helped the secretariat of state to disguise the real origin of the money borrowing the sum to be invested from the banks and pledging the money from the peter's pens [Music] this was the money that was to be used for charity but they didn't tell

the asset managers that they were for charity i did not know that the banks were told to be careful with the money they got that it could only be managed for charity no because otherwise the banks wouldn't have done any operation why are you asking me this question [Music] has to verify the feasibility of the deal but since he had no experience in the oil sector he started looking for an expert [Music] i told him your excellency my experience is financial i can simply give you a hand but regarding the technical part i have to

tell you that i will contact my bank he said yes act very discreetly we don't have to do it if it can be done if it's interesting and there are all the criteria we'll do it otherwise we don't ultimately [Music] i pointed out that i would go to the bank i worked with so credit suisse advised me to go to london where i was introduced to the mincioni group and they were experts [Music] a new mysterious character materialized in the vatican an international financer of italian origins who operated in london milan and luxembourg you met

rafael michonne for the first time in london what was your impression about him he seemed expert he told me that he came from a family failure his father had some difficulties he moved to london and from there he set up his company he boasted about friendships with the eni group the bank was doing transaction with him in london in the sense that if whoever presented him to me trusts him i did once they received the approval of cardinal angelo and enrique set to work to assess the technical and financial feasibility of the investment meanwhile the

200 million envisaged for the investment were promptly transferred to a fund owned by rafael michonne but after a year of studies and appraisals the two financers presented a negative opinion and advice against the deal took note and spread his arms everything ended there because then the operation was not done [Music] there is a lot of unrest in the secretariat of state today it's june 7 2013 and a report has just arrived from lugano that casts a dark shadow on the figure of rafael rincon [Music] the article reports that some italian deputies after an attempt by

the financer to take over the banca popolare di milano presented parliamentary inquiries to complain about the opacity of the financial flows of his company and the difficulty of justifying the origin of his financial resources [Music] is it possible that no one in secretariat has investigated about these suspicions i wanted to know your position on the vatican case mr tirabatic i abide by my professional duty since i'm still an official of the holy see i cannot give interviews however the judicial documents show that the relationship between the secretary of state and rafael michonne despite these heavy

shadows has even strengthened did the contact between raphael and the secretary of the state remain yes a contact had been established and therefore his skill ability if you will was to acquire the customer's trust and he did acquire it he proposed another investment and they accepted we are in july 2014 a central moment in the story when the secretariat of state decides to definitively abandon the idea of investing in the oil well in angola and turns its interest to another business [Music] it was proposed by rafael michonne the purchase of a building in london department

store owned by one of his companies the project was immediately endorsed by farvizo tiravasi and monsignor pulaska [Music] the building purchase was presented as a very convenient investment the logic was they were paying for something far below its market value it was 30 to 40 below what they could have achieved or with the sale or even with the renovation because there was a kind of planning permission that allowed the elevation and construction it will become a major real estate investment it's a beautiful building the old heroes department store in london a trophy asset as they

call it and so the parties agreed on how to invest the 200 million dollars that the secretary of state had already entrusted to rafael and that had flowed into his athena investment fund 100 million dollars were allocated to purchase 45 of the shares in the london building owned by the mission while the rest was invested in financial instruments of the same athena fund they were not owners of the building but of shares and funds the arrangements were that the other liquidity was to be invested in agreed financial instruments as an asset manager and used them

so the vatican was not directly the owner of the building but only of shares of funds according to the magistrates michonne also generated a huge loss for the holy see by investing the remaining 100 million in financial instruments of companies related to himself or in any case in speculative and illiquid financial instruments keep in mind that the financial markets after 2008 have always gone up so the liquidity part if managed scrumptiously most likely the returns would have been higher than the management fees but instead the athena fund was deep in the red burning 18 million

euros in five years as reported by the calculations of the petrol judiciary but not only that to carry out these operations that led to the economic disaster rafale michelle is fun would have built the secretary of state another 18 million euros in commissions he's not here what time is he coming he's not coming he's not here but does [Music] this is where the financer officially resides but we only came across one of his servants no trace of him no he has been here in recent months due to corona virus [Music] [Music] the financier moreover has

major interest in switzerland not only because this is where some of his companies are based but also because he is co-owner of the legendary hotel palace in sydney we would therefore have liked to know his side of the story especially since the investigators point to michonne himself as the person who most would have taken advantage of the london misadventure of the holy see on the phone we reach his housekeeper explain to him that if he gives me an interview it will be much better he can tell me what his position is it turns out he's

deviated so many millions i know it's public knowledge for god's sake these sums escape ordinary mortals often the difficulty i have in telling it to the readers is this if we see the derivations that this money took we can figure out how much not only the will of the donors was betrayed but also the very will of the pope but the goal of the pope is to recover the money and punish the culprits within the holy seed [Music] it was may 2018 when something bizarre happened the pope elevated archbishop angelo bichu to the rank of

cardinal and appointed him prefect of the congregation for the cause of the saints it might seem like a promotion but in reality as many people say in the vatican the only purpose of the gesture was to distance angelo bichu from the leadership of the secretary of state in fact in the vatican there was already a growing embarrassment for the situation that had come to about this investment in great loss and there was no agreement on what to do i'm calling you because i wanted to ask you for your stance for an interview we would have

liked to know from the person concerned why he wanted to invest precisely the money offered to the pontiff by the faithful for such an obscure and speculative business but his eminence declined any comment doesn't he want to comment for me one thing they should do i said this in february 2017 was to get reimbursed find a solution they didn't aiming however to buy the entire building in london by which they already owned 45 of the shares but they did not find an agreement with the financer and it is at this moment that a new actor

enters a scene in our also from london another broker of italian origins mr torzi has approached to solve a problem that certainly the secretariat of state had at the time it was also a rather pressing problem trying to find a way that could somehow liquidate pass me the term mr michonne and allow the secretary of state to regain ownership of the property was almost fatally identified for a number of reasons apart from his own professional skills above all he knew mr michonne percy was presented as a solution to get out of the deal that he

was the one who could be able to convince michonne to give up the building he said whom he knew very well could not say no to him but the business relationship they had and that he sometimes financed with his companies however i was a little skeptical about the fact that torsi financed michonne on some to sell the building he asked for an appointment at the secretariat and presented a proposal to prolaska and tarabasi saying i convinced minchonni and at these prices he would be willing to sell the building [Music] 40 million pounds this is the

sum agreed by the two italian english financiers and presented by torsi at the vatican a remarkable figure that according to the pontifical judiciary seems to be devoid of any legal and economic foundation especially when you consider that the secretariat had already paid 200 million dollars in the fund of rafael missionary and that the property was buried with a mortgage of 146 million euros in fact the vatican spent 363 million euros on a building that rafael michonne have purchased for less than half of that sum six years earlier [Music] the 40 million are not established on

an initiative of mr tarzi in the sense that of course the secretary of state has also shown a clear interest in minimizing the damage as is obvious evidently mr mitroni gave up a deal that was clearly very important to him in the face of liquidation that had to be substantial enough to allow the secretary of state to return imposition of the property were you somewhat surprised we were a little surprised but if the customer is happy i was amazed at the ease in which a solution was found in six to seven days which i feared

since january 17 2017 but who is the person who in a few days seemed able to get the vatican out of embarrassment one of the last times we talked about this because i was personally curious luigi was happy about this he said i was lucky because i managed to get into environments that normally i would never have thought of attending [Music] jane luigi grew up in gullion a small town in males and attended school for agriculture [Music] [Applause] his father enrico had a cereal warehouse and they produced fertilizers [Music] yes and he created another company

in the water purification sector what about the two companies today nothing both went bankrupt because unfortunately luigi in order to do things to reach his goals has complicated the life of his family making debts which then lead to bankruptcy from fertilizers passing through various family failures this is how jane luigi throws his career started and lead him to london in the heart of the city he is not the classic italian of a small town who goes to london and starts to work as a dishwasher he went there with a company ready to operate on the

markets to make a leave like that from a small town in males from producing fertilizers to managing international funds you don't get there because you're good at [Music] it has a very strong group of this community most likely the connections to the vatican comes directly from communion and liberation also because one of those involved was very very close to the communion and liberation [Music] the entrepreneur thus arrived on the doorstep of the holy see to resolve the dispute over the london building at the time of his appointment this controversial manager was already burdened by a

legal situation with disturbing outlines in police we are talking about jane luigi whoa who did to us in action let's say fraudulent to use the right words at first he approached and the land the financer brought the capital the villa had a commercial value of one million and three hundred thousand euros to do things in a regular manner so to speak according to his mentality which was all the game and had a whole thread he said we would do a quote-unquote fictitious bill of sale when we put the sale price of the property at 320

000 euro so we'd also pay less taxes after that we'll start building and do everything and this was basically our downfall actually the company in which this family jewel ended up is owned by torsi and not by marcelo connechonne the village did not obtain the building permit and was never built we saw ourselves practically ousted from our property cozy we filed a complaint with the financial police i showed him i suffered a scam the officer turned around looked at me and said mr kona do you and he showed me a pile of folders 60 to

70 centimeters tall on a desk that the officer told me very seriously that is jen luigi torsi since then the family has been demanding justice and they're not alone in fact there are many open proceedings against the entrepreneur some even prior to his entry into the vatican apparently the justice is pressing him for a multitude of crime in rome milan where in december 2020 there was a first hearing for an issue always linked to the veronese family his crimes range from possession of stolen goods to the arbitrary exercise of one's own reasons invasion of other

people's land and there is also the crime of aiding and abetting what did you decide to do i suddenly came to write to the pope to briefly describe our situation do you want to read what you wrote [Music] arrived at the right time and we found ourselves stripped of everything we had without realizing it because everything was masked by affectionate concerns a fraternal hand offered to us out of a difficult economic situation over time we realized an already existing theorem shady to say the least [Music] it is boxing day 2018 when something extraordinary happens the

pope grants a private audience to jane luigi tours i don't know what they said but for sure this meeting is a central piece to understand the dynamics of the facts apparently someone very close to the pope presented the financer to him as the savior of the lyndon building [Music] a catholic visited the holy father who represents the highest religious authority in the world for those who are catholics religious you know that this afternoon i have to go to the vatican to the holy father i said congratulations but i don't know whether i should go what

do you mean you don't know where you should go i mean it's such a what nice you say do you advise me to go can we say that mr torzi had become untouchable within the vatican no let's say he solved one problem but created another one right in fact the building instead of going directly from rafael michonne's athena to the vatican ended up in a company owned by jen luigi torsi the agreement was that in the meantime the secretary of state would create a special company for the london building and then the police broker would

sell the shares but this did not happen when they got this contract they realized that a thousand shares the voting share remain at tarzi i didn't even know it that is the shares with the right to vote and so the vatican couldn't do anything with this building it was the owner but in fact who managed it who had the right to vote if you're asking me if he could have sold it next day for 10 million pounds in your opinion realized that it was buying a building to which it had no right no no i

totally excluded [Music] and after a while he said listen what are these thousand shares do we have no right to vote when they read it they saw it i've never seen this contract either we're on our way we're taking the next exit yet in the holy see there are those who argue that the terms of the contract were well known okay the contract they signed with torsi doesn't make any sense i saw it it was written in black and white that the shares all the shares with voting rights would go to torzie while the holy

see took those without the right to vote there are two things either someone was too naive or they were in bad faith and took a lot of money if you are not able to understand the contract you go see a lawyer right now but no they just signed it in november it is november 2018. with a new substitute for general affairs monsignor edgar penapera who replace angelo bichu endorsed this operation which in a few days will prove to be a colossal mistake [Music] so in fact porzi is in complete control of this building even though

he didn't put ascent into it when after a few weeks the vatican decided to liquidate torsi too but i have these shares now you must pay me my mediation otherwise i will not give back these shares which in fact these shares allowed to have the building in his hands and thus have 200 million of the vatican in his hands [Music] so we get to the epilogue the most despicable crime hypothesized by the magistrates the extortion against the vatican at first would have asked the holy see even 20 million euros to drop after an exhausting negotiation

to 15 million euros i don't believe that this payment is the result of extortion but it is a payment that obviously can only be inherent in an activity that was carried out the choice was to allow the secretariat to regain the ownership of the property and on the other hand to allow from the company of mr torzi through these 1 000 shares with voting rights to be able to dispose pass me the expression of the management of this property for five years because mr torzi was told to get out of this business and therefore perhaps

15 million is a fair compensation for something that has been done and for what has obviously been taken from mr torzi with respect to the management of a property had confined it to me that he had a problem because thanks to that contract poisy felt authorized to ask for 20 million to sell the shares with the right to vote and leave the company when penapera came to me i told him with some insistence don't [Music] a solution for monsignor pennapera to take the money to pay torsi from the pope's discretionary account an account available only

to the holy father who contrary to any logic is not at the ior the vatican bank but in a swiss bank [Music] it is right here in the center of lugano that the office of a tesino trustee who manages the pope's discretionary account established in 2015 at ubs is located and it is from this account from according to monsignor palaska the techno trustee should have withdrawn 20 million pounds to satisfy the demands of jen luigi toys the instructions sent to lugano were very precise use 12 million pounds available and ask for an overdraft of another

8 million of course we would have liked to meet the tecino trustee but for reasons of confidentiality he refused to give an interview so we don't know if the pontiff's account has been affected to an interview according to the judiciary in those days 20 million materialized on an account of the vatican lawyers in london and it is with this money that jen luigi torsi is paid with two transfers for a total of 15 million but euros story does not end there the judiciary suspect that torsi did not act alone you saved me in operation and

i gave you the utmost confidence because it saved my ass [Music] fabry give me 10 million and i'll go what the hell do i have to tell you it is december 19 2018. the situation has now plummeted in a sort of summit it held in a hotel in milan to convince torsi to sell the 1 000 shares but the men of the vatican no longer trust anyone and someone records the conversation [Music] even if you give me 10 million i gave one kickback 1 million i paid him what do you think i have the bank

transfer here i'm not bullshitting you understand he called me the night before and said this is my count at the ups what really happened he literally says give me 8 million give me 10 million of those i have three left because i pay the others in bribes you're not led to believe that's a possible boasting that in the conflicted handling of that moment it could be an easy way to resolve a contrast one fact is certain that there is no evidence of this vatican investigators are trying to figure out if this money all went to

torzi or if part of this money was actually going to officials and monsignors inside the vatican therefore to understand if there is an internal corruption that somehow explains why straight jacket contracts have made all to the determine of vatican and advantage of secular financers like overwhelmed by the scandal of the london building and a series of other legal events is urgently summoned by the holy father the pope told me that he no longer trusts me because he got a report from the magistrates that i would have committed acts of embezzlement i told the holy father

if you no longer trust me i give up my mandate i'll just resign that's it [Music] for yesterday the cardinal has renounced the rights related to the cardinal 8 and will not be able to participate in the election of a pontiff i do not feel corrupted the crimes hypothesized in this investigation are corruption embezzlement money laundering and even extortion and criminal association gen luizi torsi was arrested and imprisoned in vatican prisons for 10 days with letters regulatory to the helvetic authorities the holy see's prosecution office asked for the acquisitions of the banking relations and balances

of the accountants of cardinal bichou monsignor fabrizio in the absence of a ruling at the moment the presumption of innocence applies to everyone [Music] you're mentioned as the person who would most profit from this london building deal together no not in the least before enrique the troubles do not come only from the vatican justice is also pressing him in switzerland for business related to his centurion investment fund in which the secretary of state has invested about 50 million euros another story that has turned into a crime story in the vatican are times for banker of

god who can only wait for justice it is true that i am worried but i am not afraid i certainly feel sorry for my children for my grandchildren it's something i did not expect i hope they wouldn't remember their grandfather in other ways not because of this truly incredible nonsense it's like when you work alongside a person you help him and then at some point you turn around and get a stab that's what it feels like [Music] oh