Pope Francis faces a United Nations human rights investigation for allegedly authorizing illegal wiretaps on British financier Raffaele Mincione during a Vatican embezzlement trial involving the sale of luxury London real estate.
Pope Francis faces a U.N. investigation for allegedly authorizing illegal wiretappings of phones during the Vatican embezzlement trial linked to the sale of luxury London real estate.
The Telegraph reported on Sunday that lawyers of British financier Raffaele Mincione, who is accused of defrauding the Vatican in a London real estate deal, filed a complaint to the United Nations for alleged human rights abuses committed by the Pope during the trial.
According to the Telegraph, the complaint is addressed to the U.N. special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Professor Margaret Satterthwaite, and lists the Pope as a “perpetrator” of human rights abuses.
Leading human rights lawyer Rodney Dixon, who represents Mincione, has accused Francis of personally authorizing illegal wiretaps of Mincione’s phone during investigations into the investor’s alleged wrongdoing.
“This unreasoned authorisation to prosecutors by an absolute monarch greenlit the undertaking of surveillance without the articulation of definite reasons, ongoing judicial or other independent and impartial supervision, or a mechanism by which to challenge the implementation of the surveillance before an independent and impartial tribunal,” Dixon argued.
During the Vatican embezzlement trial, which began in 2021, reports emerged that the Roman Pontiff authorized phone wiretaps during investigations into the financial scandal.
The New York Post pointed out that in April 2021 Pope Francis amended Vatican law to facilitate prosecutions for cardinals and bishops. Days later, the Pontiff reportedly ordered “the adoption of technological tools suitable for intercepting fixed and mobile devices, as well as any other communication, including electronic ones,” according to leaked documents.
Shortly thereafter, Vatican officials and Italian police officers reportedly seized Mincione’s phones and computer while the businessman was on vacation.
In December of last year, a Vatican tribunal convicted Mincione, alongside Cardinal Angelo Becciu and several other defendants, sentencing him to five-and-a-half years in prison.
In December of last year, a Vatican tribunal convicted Mincione, alongside Cardinal Angelo Becciu and several other defendants, sentencing him to five-and-a-half years in prison.
In his complaint to the U.N., Dixon argued that Mincione cannot be sentenced by a Vatican court on the basis of canon law for a “secular transaction.”
“It is not appropriate for religious tenets to be imposed on the regulation of a secular transaction without the consent of those involved in the transaction,” Dixon said in the complaint.
Dixon also criticized the alleged surveillance of Mincione’s lawyers while they were in Rome for the trial in front of the Vatican tribunal. He said the lawyers seemed to be “victims of interference if not intimidation” at the “instigation” of the Vatican.
Mincione told the Telegraph:
My basic rights have been trampled on and been ignored. How can it be correct that I have been handed criminal penalties for breaches of spiritual law which only applies to members of the Church, which don’t seem to apply to anyone else that handles the Vatican’s investments, and which I didn’t know anything about?
The Telegraph report states that Mincione is appealing his conviction by the Vatican court “on the basis that he was actually cleared of the criminal offences from the original indictment and only convicted of new offences introduced at the 11th hour and based on the Vatican’s canonical – religious, not criminal – law.”
The Vatican has maintained that it acted lawfully. The Telegraph quotes a Vatican spokesperson who said, “The legitimacy of the investigations and the correspondence of the Vatican judiciary system to the principles of fair trial has been recognised by various foreign courts.”
https://www.lewrockwell.com/2024/06/no_author/pope-francis-faces-un-investigation-over-alleged-illegal-wiretappings-in-embezzlement-scandal/
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