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Italian Police Disguise Themselves As Priests to Catch Blackmailers

By Nick Squires
The Telegraph
June 23, 2014

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/10919820/Italian-police-disguise-themselves-as-priests-to-catch-blackmailers.html

Italian police organised a sting in which they disguised themselves as priests, in order to catch two men who were blackmailing a senior Catholic clergyman over erotic telephone conversations they had taped.

Police officers sprung their trap at the weekend, arresting two Romanian men. The men had been blackmailing the priest for months and demanding ˆ250,000 in return for not handing the taped conversations to the media.

The tapes allegedly recorded Gregorio Vitali, the 70-year-old rector of a church in Vigevano, in the Lombardy region of northern Italy, having an erotic conversation with one of the two men, the Italian press reported.

The priest had allegedly handed over ˆ100,000 euros to the blackmailers in return for their silence but finally called in the police after they demanded an additional ˆ150,000.

Embarrassingly for the Vatican, the exchange of cash was handled by an intermediary: a priest who is the private secretary to a cardinal holding a senior position inside the Holy See's finance watchdog, the Financial Information Authority, which combats money laundering.

The alleged blackmailers were arrested during their latest extortion attempt by police officers dressed as clergy.

They seized a mobile phone on which the erotic conversations had been recorded.

The attempted blackmail had been going on for a year.

The Romanians, named as Flavius Savu, 33, and Florin Tanasie, 22, had allegedly threatened to hand over the compromising tapes to an Italian television show, Le Iene (The Hyenas) which specialises in investigations, satire and general mischief-making.

They were charged with blackmail and remanded in custody in a prison in the city of Pavia, south of Milan.

Police are continuing their investigations to find out if the pair had any accomplices.

They also want to establish how the priest was able to access such large amounts of money.

Father Vitali has been relieved of his position by the local diocese, ostensibly for reasons of ill health, according to La Stampa newspaper.

"The ongoing and growing reports of [blackmail] towards vulnerable members of the Christian community have convinced the Church in Vigevano to call for the involvement of the forces of law and order," the diocese said in a brief statement.

 

 

 

 

 




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