"There was a basic, point blank, refusal to share information, to collaborate, or to open the books to the Prefecture and the Council for the Economy," one senior source at the Prefecture for the Economy told CNA. "This has been a consistent attitude from both State and APSA."
After conflict over the loan, Pope Francis withdrew oversight authority over APSA's investment decisions from Pell's office. Multiple Vatican sources told CNA that decision was strongly influenced by lobbying from Becciu.
Cardinal Becciu was also responsible for the cancellation of a proposed external audit by PricewaterhouseCooper of all Vatican finances, and opposed to Cardinal Pell's intention to end the practice of keeping some Holy See assets and funds "off books."
Becciu and other officials at the Secretariat of State have explained that they objected to the external audit because of the confidentiality required to conduct their work. Recent reporting has also revealed that the Secretariat was then making unauthorized real estate investments with money borrowed from Swiss banks; a fact likely to have been revealed during an external audit.
Senior sources at the Prefecture for the Economy and APSA told CNA that the cancellation of the audit was also explained, in part, by promises that an independent audit of APSA was already planned.
But sources at both APSA and the Prefecture for the Economy said that no external or independent audit of APSA has actually been conducted, and that there has instead been a "good faith undertaking" between APSA and the Vatican's Financial Information Authority (AIF).
Senior sources at the Prefecture for the Economy and APSA also told CNA that efforts to enforce transparency at the Vatican's central bank and Secretariat of State played a decisive part in the ouster of the first Auditor General, Libero Milone, in 2017.
Milone has stated that he was forced to resign under threat of prosecution because he was pressing for information about the hundreds of millions of euros held off-books by curial bodies.
"Some people got worried that I was about to uncover something I shouldn't see," Milone told the Financial Times on November 2. "We were getting too close to information that they wanted to be secret, and they fabricated a situation for me to be thrown out."
At the time of Milone's forced departure, Cardinal Becciu defended his role in removing the auditor, saying that he had exceeded his mandate.
"He went against all the rules and was spying on the private lives of his superiors and staff, including me," Becciu said in 2017. "If he had not agreed to resign, we would have prosecuted him."
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Pell is now in prison in the Australian state of Victoria, following his 2018 conviction on five counts of sexual abuse. The cardinal could not be reached for comment.
CNA asked Cardinal Becciu for comment on his role in seeking an IOR loan for the purchase of the IDI. The cardinal declined to comment.
Ed Condon is a canon lawyer and worked as Catholic News Agency's Washington DC editor until December 2020.