VATICAN CITY — The text message addressed to a then-Vatican archbishop offered forgiveness, along with a threat: “I know everything about you … and I keep it all in my files,” it said. “I forgive you, Perlasca, but remember, you owe me a favor.”
The message was one of more than 100 recently disclosed WhatsApp texts and other messages that were presented as evidence in a Vatican court last week and have rocked a financial crimes trial related to the Holy See’s investment in a London property that made him lose money.
The texts have called into question 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.
Along with evidence that a cardinal secretly recorded Pope Francis, they confirmed that a trial originally intended to highlight Francis’ financial reforms has become a Pandora’s box of inadvertent revelations about vendettas and collusion in the Holy See.
The trial in the city-state’s criminal court stemmed from an ill-fated investment by the Holy See of 350 million euros to transform a former Harrods department store warehouse into luxury apartments.
Prosecutors have indicted 10 people in the case, saying church leaders and Vatican investment brokers sheared the Holy See out of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions, then extorted 15 million euros to get the full ownership control.
Monsignor Alberto Perlasca was initially among the main suspects. As the Vatican official who managed the Secretariat of State’s 600 million euro portfolio of assets, he was intimately involved in the transaction of that property.
But Perlasca changed his story in August 2020, began cooperating with prosecutors and blamed his deputy and superior, Cardinal Angelo Becciu, then No. 2 in the Secretary of State, for the London investment and other questionable spending.
Both the junior 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 her statements collapsed under questioning from the defense. Judge Giuseppe Pignatone gave Perlasca until the middle of the week to remember who helped him write the first tell-all memo on him on August 31, 2020.
Then the bombshell dropped, hand in hand with the text messages that the prosecutor was forced to present as evidence after receiving them. They indicated that Perlasca wrote the memo implicating his boss after receiving threats and advice from a woman who had a personal grudge against Becciu.
The woman, public relations specialist Francesca Chaouqui, previously worked on a papal commission tasked with investigating the Vatican’s vast and murky finances. She is known in Vatican circles for her role in the “Vatileaks” scandal of 2015-2016, 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 had a growing grudge against Becciu, whom she blamed for allegedly supporting her prosecution. Apparently, she saw the investigation into the London property development as an opportunity to settle the score and implicate Becciu in the alleged wrongdoing she had uncovered during her commission days.
“I knew that sooner or later the time would come and that I would send this message to you,” Chaouqui wrote to Perlasca on May 12, 2020. “Because the Lord does not allow the good to be humiliated without amending them. I forgive you, Perlasca, but remember, you owe me a favor.”
Chaouqui did not say what she wanted. But other messages revealed in court indicate that she persuaded Genoveffa Ciferri, a friend and confidante of the Perlasca family, that she could help Perlasca avoid prosecution if he followed Chaouqui’s advice.
According to Ciferri’s texts, the far-fetched conspiracy supposedly unfolded like this: Ciferri believed Chaouqui when she boasted of working hand in hand with Vatican prosecutors, gendarmes, and the pope in the criminal investigation. Ciferri wanted to help Perlasca, so she passed on Chaouqui’s advice anonymously.
Chaouqui later hosted a dinner at a restaurant in Rome during which Perlasca attempted to extract incriminating information from Becciu. Perlasca was led to believe that Vatican prosecutors had bugged the table and were recording their conversation, though no recording materialized. He provided them with a detailed memo after dinner on September 6, 2020.
The dinner took place 18 days before Francis fired Becciu and stripped him of his rights as cardinal, based on information he said he had received about Becciu’s alleged financial misconduct.
Ciferri confessed to the entire saga to prosecutor Alessandro Diddi in a November 26 text in which she said she had colluded with Chaouqui, hoping to prevent Perlasca from being criminally charged. Ciferri forwarded Diddi 126 text messages that she exchanged with Chaouqui and claimed that Chaouqui had helped prepare the August 2020 memo in which Perlasca turned his back on the cardinal.
The implications of Chaouqui’s alleged interference were clear to those in the courtroom: Perlasca, a key prosecution witness, may have been pressured by someone with a not-so-hidden agenda into providing possibly false testimony against Becciu and others. Additionally, Chaouqui boasted that he was working closely with investigators on the case.
Becciu’s lawyer, Fabio Viglione, denounced the “surreal” machinations that helped lead to his client’s prosecution, saying that Perlasca had been manipulated “to the detriment of the truth, the authenticity of the investigation and the honor of His Eminence ”.
Cataldo Intrieri, the lawyer representing Perlasca’s aide Fabrizio Tirabassi, said the revelations justified the suspension of the trial and the opening of a new criminal investigation on suspicion of fraud, threats and obstruction of justice. “However, there are implications for the facts that are the subject of this trial,” added Intrieri.
Judge Pignatone rejected defense requests to stay the trial, arguing that the proceedings relied more on documentation about the London transaction than Perlasca’s testimony. However, he scheduled interrogations in court for Ciferri and Chaouqui.
Chaouqui, when contacted by The Associated Press, declined to comment ahead of her testimony in court.
Diddi defended the investigation, firmly denying any dealings with Chaouqui before she was questioned in July and announcing that he had opened a new investigation into possible false testimony and other potential crimes based on the texts he received from Ciferri. She offered to hand over her cell phone to show that she had no dealings with Chaouqui.
“If someone boasts of having knowledge (of the investigation), I have to investigate,” he said.
Some defense attorneys have also privately complained that Diddi had evidence in February 2021 of Chaouqui’s alleged involvement with Perlasca, but that he failed to inform the defense, part of the defense’s broader complaints about the quirks of the legal system. from the Vatican. Diddi acknowledged last week that Ciferri phoned him on February 4, 2021 and that he mentioned Chaouqui’s name.
Diddi also learned of Perlasca on March 1, 2022, when the monsignor filed a formal complaint alleging that Chaouqui had threatened him, stating that he was working with prosecutors. The written complaint was only presented as evidence last week. Defense attorneys said their first hunch was that Perlasca might be a compromised witness for the prosecution.
“She sent me threatening messages on the phone, saying that I was in her hands and that only she could save me from safe imprisonment, making it clear that she could influence investigators,” Perlasca wrote in her complaint.
Chaouqui was in contact with Perlasca as recently as November 26. He texted her after his first court appearances and suggested they meet before he returned to the stand.
“My interest, and I think yours, is that my support does not arise in the trial because it would be difficult to explain it above all the consequences that it had,” he wrote.