ROME — The Vatican announced the resignation of its head of security Monday in the midst of a growing financial scandal over massive investments in London real estate.
The departure of Domenico Giani, the 57-year-old commander of the Vatican gendarmes and chief of the pope’s personal security detail, follows an unprecedented internal raid on the offices of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State and the Financial Information Authority, which oversees the Vatican Bank.
During the raid, Vatican security under Giani’s authority confiscated documents and electronic devices and immediately afterward five Vatican employees were suspended on allegations of financial wrongdoing involving property dealings in London’s tony Chelsea district to the tune of some $350 million.
The following day, an order signed by Giani regarding the suspension of the five Vatican employees, who were banned from entering Vatican territory, was leaked to the press, which reportedly infuriated Pope Francis.
While the Vatican’s announcement of Giani’s retirement did not directly spell out why he was leaving, it did say that although Giani “bears no subjective responsibility,” the release of the confidential report was nonetheless “prejudicial to the dignity of the people involved and to the image of the Gendarmerie.”
Giani began his career as an official of the Italian secret service, then was brought to the Vatican gendarmerie as vice-inspector in 1999. He spent over two decades as the Vatican’s supreme law enforcement officer, a figure that veteran Vatican analyst John L. Allen likened to the J. Edgar Hoover of the Catholic Church.
Suspicions of personal corruption followed allegations that Giani had embezzled funds totaling some $160,000 meant for the Vatican police for home improvements to his personal apartment.
While rumors of Giani’s impending ouster had already been circulating since last February, many Vatican watchers believed that he was untouchable because “he knew where all the bodies were buried,” as one insider put it to Breitbart News.
In the eye of the hurricane is Italian Cardinal Angelo Becciu, currently the prefect of the Congregation for the Causes of Saints, who oversaw the offices of the Secretariat of State during the period under investigation.
One of the five Vatican staff caught up in the October 2 raid was Monsignor Mauro Carlino, a former secretary and longtime aide to Becciu who resides in the Vatican’s Santa Marta residence.
Cardinal Becciu has been accused of obstructing investigations initiated by Cardinal George Pell into financial improprieties by Vatican officials. According to the Financial Times, Vatican investments in London properties made in 2014 and 2018 were authorized by Becciu, who was the second-ranking official in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State at that time.
It was reportedly Becciu who blocked a proposed external audit of all Vatican departments in 2016, which was to be carried out by the accounting firm PriceWaterhouseCooper.
Becciu was also responsible for the dismissal of the Vatican’s first-ever auditor general, Libero Milone in 2017. Suspicions have been raised that both Pell’s prosecution in Australia for alleged abuse, which resulted in his removal from his post as economic czar in the Vatican, and the firing of the auditor general, were driven at least in part by Becciu’s efforts to cover his tracks and avoid an investigation into his dealings.
At the time, Milone declared that he had been dismissed on bogus charges after he unearthed evidence of financial misconduct under Becciu’s direction, noting that his investigations and the reforming work of Pell’s Prefecture for the Economy were perceived as a threat to the business practices of powerful Curial officials.