The prosecution at a Vatican trial of 10 individuals accused of monetary crimes, together with a cardinal, acknowledged, on Tuesday, weaknesses in its case and stated it was keen to return to the investigative section to fill in gaps contested by the defence.
Deputy prosecutor Alessandro Diddi made the shock announcement on the first listening to for the reason that trial began in July, saying: “I feel the duty to meet (the defence requests) halfway.”
Defence attorneys instructed the court docket Diddi’s request was unacceptable. Citing a raft of what they stated had been procedural errors, they requested court docket president Giuseppe Pignatone to annul the 500-page indictment of the ten handed down on July 3, which might successfully kill the present trial.
Pignatone adjourned the trial after about two hours and stated he would announce his selections on Wednesday morning.
The trial revolves largely across the buy by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State of a business and residential constructing at 60 Sloane Avenue in London’s South Kensington, one of many wealthiest districts within the British capital.
If Pignatone agrees to Diddi’s request he and others on the prosecution staff will return to their work with 1000’s of pages and proof and paperwork, query among the defendants once more, and different witnesses for the primary time.
In the primary two periods of the trial, defence attorneys stated their work was hindered as a result of they didn’t have entry to all of the proof and had been involved about doable discrepancies.
In explicit, they wish to view movies of 5 interrogations of Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, a former Vatican official who was first a suspect after which a star witness for the prosecution.
Prosecutors have urged that there have been privateness issues concerning different individuals in Perlasca’s testimony and feared they’d be leaked.
Perlasca is the primary witness within the case towards probably the most outstanding defendant, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, a once-powerful Vatican official.
The prosecution has accused Becciu, different former Vatican officers or workers and outdoors middlemen concerned within the deal of embezzlement, abuse of workplace, and fraud, amongst different expenses. They all have denied wrongdoing.
The Secretariat of State sank greater than 350 million euros into the London funding, in response to Vatican media, and suffered what Cardinal George Pell, an ex-Vatican treasurer, instructed Reuters final yr had been “enormous losses”.
Pope Francis fired Becciu from his final Vatican submit in 2020 for alleged nepotism, which he additionally has denied.
