Sex, lies and Cardinal sin? A most unholy scandal
by Guy Adams, Mailonline:
AS A tidal wave of cash flowed into London’s super-prime property market, the deal that saw a former Harrods car showroom in Chelsea change hands for £129 million generated barely a ripple of interest.
Like many a property in this gilded corner of our capital, the Edwardian brick building on Sloane Avenue was to be converted into 49 luxury flats, with a smattering of top-end shops beneath to cater for residents.
The buyer, an opaque company named 60 SA Limited and registered in the tax haven of Jersey, hoped to sell them for a total of £400 million and turn a handsome profit.
That was back in 2012. Today, the flats have long since been built and the building’s ground floor is occupied by fashion boutiques, art galleries, delicatessens, and an ultra-posh health club where membership starts at £615 a month.
However, the original deal that led to this monument to Mammon imploded, spectacularly, leaving a major investor — The Vatican — with serious financial losses. It appears to be tens, if not hundreds, of millions of pounds out of pocket.
The Chelsea property, as a result, is at the centre of an epic corruption scandal implicating some of the most senior figures in the Catholic Church.
Allegedly, it involves sex, money, prostitution and money-laundering by senior Vatican power-brokers — along with an unlikely blackmail plot so sensational that you’d be forgiven for thinking it had been plucked from the pages of a Dan Brown novel.
For the case is perhaps the worst corruption crisis for the Catholic Church since the early 1980s, when Roberto Calvi — a financier famously known as ‘God’s Banker’ because of his links to the Vatican — was found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London, his pockets stuffed with bricks and more than £10,000 cash in three currencies.
Proceedings culminated on Tuesday at a special court in the Holy See, where a former ally of Pope Francis, Angelo Becciu, became the first Cardinal since the 17th century to stand in the dock at a criminal trial.
Read also: The corruption of the Vatican by Damian Thompson, UnHerd
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