Posted on 10/26/2020 7:05:39 PM PDT by marshmallow
CNA Staff, Oct 23, 2020 / 09:00 am MT (CNA).- Police in the Australian state of Victoria said Friday that they have no plans for a further investigation into reports of money transfers from the Vatican during the trial of Cardinal George Pell, while federal police have said the information they have received is under their review, and been shared with an anti-corruption commission.
Victoria Police told journalists Oct. 23 that AUSTRAC, Australia’s financial intelligence agency, had shared information with the force regarding the transfers.
“AUSTRAC has made Victoria police aware of transfer of monies from the Vatican over a period of time to Australia,” a police statement said.
“They have not advised Victoria Police of any suspicious activity related to these transactions. In the absence of any other evidence or intelligence, Victoria Police has noted the advice from AUSTRAC. We are not at this time conducting any further investigation.”
On Tuesday, it emerged that the financial intelligence agency had passed details of the transfers to both federal police and state police in Victoria.
During an Oct. 20 Senate committee hearing, Nicole Rose, the chief executive of AUSTRAC, was asked about allegations, first published in Italian media on Oct. 2, that approximately 700,000 euros ($829,000) in Church funds had been sent to Australia at the behest of Cardinal Angelo Becciu for the purposes of influencing Cardinal Pell’s trial on charges of sexual abuse.
Liberal Party senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells asked Rose about media reports of the transfers “allegedly from Vatican funds to a person or persons in Australia.”
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicnewsagency.com ...
The Victoria Police mounted a ‘Get Pell’ operation. They are not competent to investigate this, because there is a very real potential that they could be seen to be implicated.
If they probed Vatican banking what a can of worms that would be.
A very small consolation at that though......
Yes, asking them to investigate it is a waste of time. I read that some of the money may have gone to the judge, also.
Disgusting!
Prayers up for Cardinal Pell.
As for the police - the issue I have there is the potential for them to wind up investigating themselves and that's a problem whether anybody is corrupt or not. If somebody is, can they be trusted to find that? If nobody is, would anybody trust them if they said that is what their investigation found?
There needs to be some sort of genuine independent investigation so anybody guilty can be found, and anybody innocent can be shown to be innocent by a process that can be trusted.
I think it was in reference to an earlier trial or perhaps procedures leading up to it. I believe there was a panel then.
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