Vatican money for real estate investments: documents and PCs seized from Monsignor Perlasca
The Vatican gendarmerie triggered a series of searches against Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, former head of the administrative office of the First Section of the Secretariat of State, seizing various material, including paper documents and computer equipment. The Prelate is the sixth suspect in the investigation which last October saw five employees of the Holy See under investigation and suspended.
In Vatican check a sixth investigated in the investigation on financial and real estate investments carried out with the money of the Curia. In the past few hours, in fact, the Vatican gendarmerie has triggered a series of searches against Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, former head of the administrative office of the First Section of the Secretariat of State, seizing various material, including paper documents and computer equipment, present at the office and home of the prelate. As reported by a press release from the Vatican Press Office, the searches and kidnappings, ordered by the Promoter of Justice Gian Piero Milano and the Deputy Alessandro Diddi, “are linked to what emerged from the first interrogations of the officials under investigation and suspended from service at the time”.
The 59-year-old Perlasca, substitute Promoter of Justice at the Supreme Tribunal of the Apostolic Signatura since July 2019, therefore becomes the sixth suspect in the investigation which in October last year had seen five employees of the Holy See investigated and suspended. The allegations against Monsignor Alberto Perlasca emerged precisely from the statements of the five suspects. The investigation was launched after some complaints made following investigations carried out by Vatican financial and control bodies and intends to shed light on some speculative real estate and financial investments also outside Italy and made with the money of the Holy See. The offenses include embezzlement, abuse of authority and corruption.
After the scandal that led to the first suspects, the same Pope francesco had talked about “Suspicious financial situations, that beyond the possible illegality, they are badly reconciled with the nature and purposes of the Church, and which have generated disorientation and disquiet in the community of the faithful ”. “The Promoter’s Office and the Gendarmerie Corps – concludes the note from the Press Office – are continuing with administrative-accounting investigations and cooperation activities with foreign investigative authorities”.
