Cardinal Angelo Becciu off-ered to personally reimburse the Holy See for funds paid to Cecelia Marogna, the Vatican City court heard on  October 13.
In testimony from the card-inal, and from a senior Vatican police officer, judges in the Va-tican’s sprawling financial crimes trial heard that Becciu made the offer after he was informed Inter-pol had flagged payments to Mar-gona, the self-styled international security consultant and private spy, which had been authorized by the cardinal.
According to Stefano De Santis, a senior officer in the Va-tican City’s corps of gendarmes, he and Vatican police chief Gian-luca Broccoletti visited Becciu at his Vatican apartments in early October of 2020, at the cardinal’s request, to update him on their findings regarding Marogna.
De Santis told the court that he and Broccoletti informed the cardinal that Interpol had flagged a series of payments totalling some 575,000 euros to Marog-na’s Slovenian-registered comp-any, which had been spent prima-rily on luxury goods and hotels.
According to the police inve-stigator, Becciu offered to repay the funds from his personal account at the IOR, a Vatican bank, and asked them to keep the matter confidential because it would cause “serious harm” to the cardinal and his family.
Marogna, who is charged with embezzlement during the current Vatican trial, has not presented herself in court and successfully fought against extra-dition to the Vatican in 2021.