Vatican to work with Italian authorities to prosecute source of leaks

Vatican City, Sep 19, 2024 / 11:36 am (CNA).

The Vatican is cooperating with Italian prosecutors on an investigation into the leaking of financial information related to the Vatican’s major finance trial that ended last year.

Italian media report that two men are being investigated for having gained unauthorized access hundreds of times to a database of suspicious financial activity shared with Italy by banks, which includes potentially compromising information on Italian politicians and defendants in the Vatican trial.

The database is used by anti-mafia prosecutors and judges in cases of money laundering and terrorism financing.

A brief note to journalists from the Holy See Press Office on Tuesday said Vatican prosecutor Alessandro Diddi and the commander of the Vatican gendarmes, Gianluca Gauzzi, met Sept. 17 with the public prosecutor and deputy public prosecutor of Perugia, Italy.

The public prosecutor of Perugia has jurisdiction over the investigation of crimes committed by magistrates and public prosecutors in Rome.

During the meeting, the two judicial offices agreed to collaborate on an ongoing investigation into “unauthorized access to a computer or telematic system,” a crime in Italian law, for the clandestine collection of information on individuals. In common Italian parlance, the action is often called “dossieraggio.”

It has not been publicly reported for what purpose the information was gathered and if it was done on behalf of anyone.

The Perugia prosecutor is going after a lieutenant of Italy’s financial police, Pasquale Striano, who was working at the National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Bureau, as well as one of the bureau’s public prosecutors, Antonio Laudati, for having allegedly accessed nonpublic information on possibly up to 172 Italian politicians and other media figures.

Striano is also accused of being the source of reports published by two journalists from the Italian daily Domani, who are also under investigation for allegedly reporting protected information, Italian newspaper Il Giornale reported.

Striano and Laudati have both publicly denied the accusations.

According to the press office’s note, Vatican prosecutor Diddi has also opened his own case on the “alleged illegal accesses [to information] made during the course of investigations in the well-known inquiry concerning the purchase of the London building.”

Il Giornale also reported last March on accusations that in 2019, Striano was allegedly asked by some unknown person, possibly someone inside the Vatican, to get information on at least five people, all of whom were later charged and convicted in the Vatican’s major finance trial that concluded in December 2023: Cardinal Angelo Becciu, Cecilia Marogna, Raffaele Mincione, Fabrizio Tirabassi, and Gianluigi Torzi.

In 2019, the Vatican’s prosecutor’s office was in the early stages of the investigation into the Secretariat of State’s London investment, gathering its case against the 10 individuals later charged with crimes including financial fraud.