Former Head of Vatican Bank Sentenced to Eight Years Jail for Theft

Former Head of Vatican Bank Sentenced to Eight Years Jail for Theft

Former Head of Vatican Bank Sentenced to Eight Years Jail for Theft. image: Pixabay

Former Head of Vatican Bank Sentenced to Eight Years Jail for Theft.

A former head of the Vatican bank, Angelo Caloia, has been found guilty of embezzlement and money laundering and sentenced to eight years and 11 months in prison, making him the highest-ranking Vatican official ever to be convicted of a financial crime.

The Vatican court also convicted Gabriele Liuzzo, 97, and his son Lamberto Liuzzo, 55, both Italian lawyers who were consultants to the bank. Caloia led the bank, officially known as the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), from 1989 to 2009. The 81-year-old Italian was tried over corrupt real estate deals.

He was accused of conspiring with others to make millions from the below-market sale of more than 20 IOR properties in Italy and laundering the proceeds in Switzerland. The court established that the defendants “pocketed some of the money paid by buyers, or in any case money belonging to IOR, for a total of around 19 million euros ”, the Vatican said in a statement.

Prosecutors claimed the illicit gains were worth 59 million euros in total, but judges did not find evidence of wrongdoing for some of the 29 deals under scrutiny. Liuzzo and Lamberto were sentenced to eight years and eleven months, and five years and two months respectively.

The court ordered the sequestering of about 38 million euros in defendants’ bank accounts that were frozen and a payment of more than 20 million euros in damages to the IOR and its real estate company.


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Tony Winterburn

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