Cardinal 'claimed pope to die'

[seemslikeadream]

Pope's Ex-Butler Charged in Theft Case

By STACY MEICHTRY

VATICAN CITY—A Vatican judge ordered Pope Benedict XVI's former butler and another Vatican employee to stand trial for the alleged theft of confidential papal documents that scandalized the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church.

Judge Piero Antonio Bonnet charged the former butler, Paolo Gabriele, 45 years old, with aggravated theft. In a 20-page indictment, Judge Bonnet alleged Mr. Gabriele used his position as a member of the pope's household staff to purloin a cache of secret documents from Msgr. Georg Gänswein, the pope's private secretary.

Judge Bonnet also charged Claudio Sciarpelletti, a 48-year-old Holy See computer technician, with being an accessory to the theft after the fact, and ordered him to appear in the same trial. The judge alleged that Mr. Sciarpelletti held on to some of the documents Mr. Gabriele allegedly stole and failed to clearly explain to Vatican police how he got them.

Lawyers for Messrs. Gabriele and Sciarpelletti didn't respond to written requests to comment on Monday.

Enlarge Image

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Then-butler Paolo Gabriele, bottom center, with Pope Benedict XVI at Saint Peter's Square last year.

Mr. Gabriele told Vatican judicial authorities in May, June and July that he took the documents from the papal apartments because he feared the pope's advisers were keeping him "uninformed or misinformed" about tensions in church hierarchy, according to excerpts of his interrogations included in the indictment. The then-butler photo-copied the documents and leaked them to an Italian journalist because he wanted to expose "corruption everywhere in the church," he told judicial authorities, according to the indictment.

"I was sure that a shock, even through the media, would have been healthy to put the church back on the right track," the indictment quoted Mr. Gabriele as telling Vatican judicial authorities. "In a way, I felt like a secret agent for the Holy Spirit."

Vatican prosecutors were continuing to investigate whether others were involved in the leak scandal, said Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi. The Vatican will set a date for the trial of Messrs. Sciarpelletti and Gabriele after Vatican officials return from summer holiday in late September, Father Lombardi said.

The high-profile case will be a challenge for the Vatican's tribunal, which is staffed with lawyers trained in canon law who are far more accustomed to prosecuting violations of church law or petty crimes such as pickpocketing and shoplifting that go on in the world's smallest state.

Mr. Gabriele, who was detained by Vatican police in late May and remains under house arrest, faces up to six years in prison if he is convicted. Mr. Sciarpelletti, who isn't in police custody, faces a "very limited" penalty, Father Lombardi said, without saying whether a prison sentence was possible.

Mr. Gabriele told judicial authorities that he also gave papal documents to Mr. Sciarpelletti and to a priest—identified in the indictment as "Padre B"—who he considered a spiritual adviser, the indictment said. Father B told judicial authorities that he burned the documents because he feared they were "not honest," the indictment said.

Mr. Sciapelletti told police he received documents from Mr. Gabriele years ago, playing down his relationship with the former butler, according to the indictment. The technician later recanted that account, the indictment said, telling prosecutors that he received the documents from another person—identified as "W" in theindictment—to give to Mr. Gabriele. He also admitted to socializing with Mr. Gabriele outside work, the indictment said.

The publication of documents allegedly purloined by the former butler stunned the Vatican, an institution renowned for its discretion. The cache, splashed across TV broadcasts and newspapers, included letters by a high-ranking Vatican bishop beseeching the pope to crack down on other Vatican officials who the bishop alleged were commissioning projects and services for double their actual price. The Holy See later reassigned the documents' author to a diplomatic post outside the Vatican.

The Vatican confirmed the authenticity of the documents but vigorously denied the allegations of corruption. The pope created a commission of cardinals to investigate the leaks while Vatican prosecutors launched a separate probe that lead to Monday's indictment. So far, Vatican prosecutors aren't looking into the actual allegations of corruption contained in the documents allegedly stolen by Mr. Gabriele, Father Lombardi said.

In late May, Vatican police searched Mr. Gabriele's home and found a "load of documents," the indictment said. Police also turned up gifts that Catholic institutions had given to the pope, including a €100,000 ($123,000) check addressed to the pope from a Catholic University, as well as a 16th-century edition of Virgil's Aeneid.

Questioned by Judge Bonnet in late July, Mr. Gabriele said he was sometimes given the task of putting such gifts into storage. The former butler said he planned to give the items back, adding that he might have lost track of them in his disorderly home, the indictment said.

In comments to the Associated Press, Mr. Gabriele's lawyer, Carlo Fusco, said the check had "by chance" ended up in a pile of the pope's paperwork that Mr. Gabriele had accumulated in his apartment. Mr. Fusco said his client "had never taken money or any other economic advantage" in his role as butler.

[cptmarginal]

So from the media reports I've looked at, every single statement being attributed to Gabriele is sourced from a document detailing his interrogation by the authorities of the sovereign Vatican state.

"I was sure that a shock, even through the media, would have been healthy to put the church back on the right track," the indictment quoted Mr. Gabriele as telling Vatican judicial authorities. "In a way, I felt like a secret agent for the Holy Spirit."

Good luck with all that, guys! It sounds so believable. Will the trial be open to the media, or should we continue to just take their word for it?

[Bruce Dazzling]

God's banker linked to Pablo Escobar
Nick Squires in Rome
3:46PM GMT 26 Nov 2012
Telegraph

Roberto Calvi, who earned his nickname for his close ties to the Vatican Bank, was found hanged beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London amid strong suspicions that he was murdered.

Ayda Suarez Levy, the widow of a Bolivian druglord, claims that Calvi was laundering drug cartel money through an account in Nassau, in the Bahamas, on behalf of South American drug lords.

The Cocaine King sheds new light on Calvi's death, which remains one of the Vatican's darkest chapters and most contested mysteries.

Mrs Levy, the widow of Roberto Suarez Gomez, claimed in an interview on Italian television on Monday that Mr Calvi was her husband's "Italian contact".

"He said he could vouch for us," she told Italy's Channel Seven television.

"He said by vouching for us at such a high level, business would go well for us. I imagine he was talking about cocaine. He was not explicit but I imagine that is what it was about."

Ms Levy recounted an encounter involving her husband and Gunter Sachs, a multi-millionaire German playboy who was the third husband of Brigitte Bardot.

She said that six months before Calvi's death, she and her husband met Mr Sachs on a trip to Switzerland and they discussed the Italian banker.

Mr Sachs, who committed suicide in his Swiss chalet last year at the age of 78, reportedly told the Bolivian drug baron: "Calvi is very scared because Pablo Escobar wants his money back from the bank in Nassau."

The Bahamas bank that he was referring to was an affiliate of Banco Ambrosiano, which was Italy's biggest private bank when it collapsed in 1982.

It was headed by Mr Calvi, who had close ties to the Vatican's bank, formally known as the Istituto per le Opere di Religion – the Institute for Religious Works.

The claims made in the book could "completely revolutionise the interpretation of Calvi's death," said Philip Willan, the author of "The Last Supper – The Mafia, the Masons and the killing of Roberto Calvi".

Until now the speculation was that Calvi was murdered by the Cosa Nostra mafia of Sicily, possibly with complicity by Italian politicians or the Vatican itself.

"If Escobar wanted his money back and Calvi was not able to pay it, he would have had a motive to kill Calvi. There is evidence suggesting that Calvi may have had direct links to the laundering of drug money in the Caribbean," said Mr Willan.

The evidence was enough to persuade the US Customs Service to launch an investigation into the alleged laundering of $34 million through the Bahamas affiliate of the Banco Ambrosiano in the late 1980s.

In 1988 Suarez Gomez, the Bolivian drug trafficker, was given a 15 year prison sentence for drug crimes, but was released in 1996.

By then he had accumulated a huge fortune. His widow recounts in the book how his men produced around two tons of cocaine paste in jungle laboratories in Bolivia each day and then sent it to Escobar's Medellin cartel.

At the height of its power, the cartel, headed by Escobar, was smuggling 15 tons of cocaine into the US each day.

[seemslikeadream]

maybe plutonium was involved and just took a little more time than first thought

Ex-Vatican bank head linked to Finmeccanica probe

Chopper scam: Govt suspends payments for Italy's Finmeccanica
Reuters | Feb 13, 2013, 07.58 PM IST

India, the world's largest weapons importer, has a long history of corruption in defence deals. (Reuters photo)
RELATED
Former IAF chief admits meeting middleman
NEW DELHI: India has suspended payments to Italian defence group Finmeccanica SpA for a $750 million helicopter deal and won't take delivery of more aircraft until the completion of a federal police investigation into bribery allegations, a defence ministry source told Reuters.

Will blacklist Finmeccanica if bribery proven

India will cancel a $750 million deal to buy helicopters from Finmeccanica SpA and blacklist the Italian defence group if bribery allegations are proven, defence minister AK Antony said, as political opponents tried to capitalize on the scandal.

Italian police arrested Finmeccanica's chief executive Giuseppe Orsi on Tuesday for alleged bribes paid to secure the sale of 12 AgustaWestland executive helicopters to the Indian Air Force, when he was head of the Finmeccanica helicopter unit. Orsi's lawyer denied the allegations.

The former head of India's Air Force, SP "Shashi" Tyagi, and three of his cousins are among the Indians named in the arrest warrant for Orsi. All say they are innocent.

AK Antony said he had ordered Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) to investigate the purchase of the luxury helicopters destined for use by India's political leadership. He said that if the allegations are proven to be true, the company would be blacklisted and those involved punished.

"If any individual or foreigner, any firm are involved in this malpractice, nobody will be spared. We will take action against them, whatever may be the consequences," he told reporters on Wednesday. Three helicopters have already been delivered.

Coming at a time of cuts in defence procurement spending, the latest scandal could lead to additional scrutiny and delays for defence deals in the works.

"I am sure that there will be initial setback, but we will overcome that. That is not the main thing. The main thing is that we cannot allow corruption in defence deals," Antony said when asked about the impact on weapons modernization.

The arrests in Italy came as Finmeccanica unit Alenia Aermacchi was preparing to compete for a contract to supply over 50 military transport aircraft to India in competition with European aerospace group EADS.

The military arm of EADS subsidiary Airbus told Reuters last week it would offer its C295 military transport plane, adding that manufacturers were waiting for a formal competition document from the Indian government.

India, the world's largest weapons importer, has a long history of corruption in defence deals. A multi-million dollar scandal in the 1980s over the purchase of Swedish Bofors artillery guns contributed to an electoral defeat for then-Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, of the Congress party.

The current Congress party-led government has been buffeted by a series of corruption scandals that opposition parties plan to exploit ahead of general elections due in 2014.

India's defence ministry has put in place strict guidelines for arms deals in an effort to crack down on bribery and corruption. Last year, six arms firms including Rheinmetall Air Defence, part of Rheinmetall AG, a German automotive parts and defence group, were placed on a blacklist of firms banned from doing business in India. Rheinmettal strongly denied the allegations against it.

The opposition Bharatiya Janata Party accused Antony of dragging his feet in the latest instance and said the case was similar to the Bofors scandal, which implicated an Italian middleman close to the Gandhis. The BJP often seeks to play up the Italian origins of current Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi, Rajiv's widow.

"I see the making of another Bofors in this," BJP spokesman Ravi Shankar Prasad said. He asked why the government had not launched a police investigation earlier despite the details of the Italian prosecution case, including suspects' names, being published in media reports months ago.

"The suspicious circumstances surrounding this raises one fundamental question again — the fact that it was an Italian company, was it the grounds to go slow?"

The Indian Express newspaper had access to Italian prosecution documents last October and ran a series of stories giving detailed accounts of the alleged bribery and named several Indians said to have been involved.

The minister formally ordered the CBI to investigate the deal after Orsi's arrest on Tuesday. It was not clear why the agency had not been asked to investigate before, but Antony criticized Italy on Wednesday for not responding to requests for information about the allegations uncovered by Italian investigators.

"From day one, we have been trying to find out the truth and we conveyed that to them," he said. "So far we have not received any details."

Antony said that so far internal enquiries by the defence ministry have found no evidence against Finmeccanica in the deal. He refused to answer specific questions about the Italian allegations and said the CBI investigation would find the truth.

Former Air Force chief

The Italian arrest warrant for Orsi said three brothers who are cousins of Shashi Tyagi received kickbacks and helped twist rules in favour of AgustaWestland in the helicopter tender.

Tyagi denied all wrongdoing and described the charges as "bunkum". Speaking at his home near Delhi, he said that a requirement that the aircraft fly at 18,000 feet (6,000 metres) had been lowered to 15,000 ft, but during a government led by the opposition BJP and before his time as air chief.

He said the change was necessary because only one helicopter was able to fly that high. Tyagi admitted to having met an Italian called Carlo Gerosa who Italian authorities accuse — along with his US-born partner Guido Ralph Haschk — of working as a middleman for Finmeccanica.

Tyagi, who spoke openly and extensively with media on Wednesday about the case, said he had met Gerosa at least twice, once 15 years ago and once since his retirement, but not while he ran the Air Force.

Gerosa and Haschk are directors of an India-based IT company called Aeromatrix, the company told Reuters. Tyagi said his cousins had links to Gerosa, but he knew nothing of any defence dealings. Tyagi said he had no knowledge of Gerosa's links to Finmeccanica.

He said the deal had been sealed three years after he retired from the air force in 2007 and denied the changes to the tender requirements had happened during his time in the job.

Antony said he could not comment on the alleged involvement of Tyagi, who still headed the IAF when Antony took over the ministry in 2006.

"I have no information within my hands ... nothing is available with me. How can I say anything? At the moment, I will not say anything against any individual unless I get some reports from CBI," he said.

Finmeccanica head arrested over India bribe allegations


Home of ex-Vatican bank chief searched in widening Finmeccanica corruption probe
By The Associated Press | Associated Press – Tue, Jun 5, 2012