Police found € 600.000 in cash at the suspended Vatican official's home

Police found hundreds of thousands of euros in cash hidden in two homes of a suspended Vatican official under investigation for corruption, Italian media reported.

Fabrizio Tirabassi was a lay official at the Secretariat of State until his suspension, along with four other employees, last year. According to sources close to the Secretariat for the Economy, Tirabassi has handled various financial transactions currently under investigation at the secretariat.

The Italian newspaper Domani reported that, on orders from the Vatican prosecutor's office, Vatican gendarmes and the Italian finance police searched two of the properties in Tirabassi, in Rome and in Celano, a city in central Italy where Tirabassi was born.

The research, centered on computers and documents, also reportedly uncovered bundles of banknotes worth 600.000 euros ($ 713.000). About 200.000 euros were reportedly found in an old shoe box.

Police also reportedly found valuables worth an estimated two million euros and a number of gold and silver coins hidden in a cupboard. According to Domani, Tirabassi's father had a stamp and coin collecting shop in Rome, which may explain his possession of the coins.

CNA has not independently confirmed the report.

Tirabassi has not returned to work since his suspension in October 2019 and it is unclear whether he remains employed by the Vatican.

He is one of the many people investigated by the Vatican in relation to investments and financial transactions carried out at the Secretariat of State.

At the center of the investigation is the purchase of a building at 60 Sloane Avenue in London, which was purchased in stages, between 2014 and 2018, by the Italian entrepreneur Raffaele Mincione, who at the time managed hundreds of million euros of secretarial funds. .

Businessman Gianluigi Torzi was called in to mediate the final negotiations for the Vatican's purchase of the London property in 2018. CNA previously reported that Tirabassi was appointed director of one of Torzi's companies while the man business acted as an intermediary for the purchase of the remaining shares.

According to company documents, Tirabassi has been appointed director of Gutt SA, a Luxembourg company owned by Torzi, used to transfer ownership of the building between the Mincione and the Vatican.

Documents filed for Gutt SA with the Luxembourg Registre de Commerce et des Sociétés show that Tirabassi was appointed director on 23 November 2018 and removed from a filing sent on 27 December. At the time of Tirabassi's appointment as director, his business address was listed as the Secretariat of State in the Vatican City.

In early November, Italian media reported that the Rome Guardia di Finanza had executed a search warrant against Tirabassi and Mincione, as well as the banker and historic Vatican investment manager Enrico Crasso.

Reports said the warrant was issued as part of an investigation into suspicions that the three were working together to defraud the Secretariat of State.

The Italian newspaper La Repubblica reported on November 6 that part of the search warrant said Vatican investigators had testified that the money from the Secretariat of State had passed through a Dubai-based company dal Mincione before being paid to Crassus and Tirabassi as commissions for the London Construction Deal.

A testimony reportedly cited in the search order states that the commissions were collected in the Dubai company and then split between Crasso and Tirabassi, but that at some point the Mincione stopped paying commissions to the company. Dubai.

According to La Repubblica, a witness in the research decree also claimed that there was an "axis" of understanding between Tirabassi and Crasso, in which Tirabassi, an official of the secretariat, would have received a bribe to "direct" the secretariat's investments in certain ways.

Tirabassi has not publicly commented on the allegations