Pope Francis faces United Nations probe over accusations of illegal phone tapping linked to London property sale
Pope Francis faces a UN investigation over his personal authorisation of allegedly unlawful wiretaps during a Vatican investigation into the sale of a central London property.
Lawyers for Raffaele Mincione, a British financier accused of defrauding the Vatican, have filed a complaint to the UN about alleged abuses committed during the trial by the Pope.
Rodney Dixon KC, a leading human rights barrister, has accused the Pope of personally authorising unlawful wiretaps of Mr Mincione’s phone during the investigation into alleged wrongdoing at the Vatican.
During the trial, it emerged that Pope Francis handed powers to investigators allowing them to tap phones, intercept emails and arrest anyone they wanted to without approval from a judge.
The powers were based on ancient laws the pope could use as divine monarch of the Vatican. In the complaint to Prof Margaret Satterthwaite, the UN special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Mr Dixon listed the pontiff as a “perpetrator” of human rights abuses.
“This unreasoned authorisation to prosecutors by an absolute monarch green-lit the undertaking of surveillance without the articulation of definite reasons, ongoing judicial or other independent and impartial supervision,” said Mr Dixon.
The Vatican claims Mr Mincione defrauded it by inflating the price when it invested €150m in a former Harrods warehouse in Chelsea via a fund managed by Mr Mincione.
Prosecutors charged Mr Mincione and 10 others including Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the former right-hand man to Pope Francis, with offences including fraud, embezzlement, and abuse of office.
Mr Mincione maintains he did not do anything wrong, and that the property was appropriately valued.
Last December, the financier was convicted of breaching canonical − or spiritual – law and handed a five-and-a-half-year jail sentence by Vatican judges. He and his legal team claim that he has been the victim of a “witch-hunt”.
“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,” Mr Dixon said in his complaint, filed ahead of a session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva which starts today.
Mr Dixon also criticised claims Mr Mincione’s lawyers were placed under surveillance in Rome during the trial before a panel of three Catholic judges. In his UN complaint, Mr Dixon said they appeared to be “victims of interference if not intimidation” at the “instigation” of the Vatican.
The Vatican maintains it has acted appropriately and within the law.
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