Vatileaks 2 Defendant, Husband, Probed

ANSA
December 1, 2015

http://www.ansa.it/english/news/vatican/2015/11/30/vatileaks-2-defendant-husband-probed_c90b430e-0a77-45ea-b18c-6b75d4d6f86a.html


Vatican, City, November 30 - Rome prosecutors have placed Vatileaks 2 defendant Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui and her husband Corrado Lanino under investigation for suspected irregularities in the sale of San Girolamo castle near the town of Narni, judicial sources said Monday. Chaouqui, a public relations expert, is currently on trial in the Vatican along with four others for allegedly leaking confidential documents. Chaouqui and her co-defendants, investigative journalists Gianluigi Nuzzi and Emiliano Fittipaldi, Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda and his former assistant Nicola Maio, all attended Monday's hearing.

Chaouqui, Balda and Maio are charged with leaking the confidential material and Nuzzi and Fittipaldi with using it in two recently published books - one titled Avarice, the other Merchants in the Temple - documenting Vatican waste and mismanagement and lavish spending by clergymen.

Balda, who is jailed in a Vatican prison, reportedly alleged in a written statement that he and Chaouqui were lovers and that he feared she may be a secret service agent.

"I don't understand anything," Chaouqui said on Monday.

"There's no evidence against me".

"Seeing Balda smiling instead of being ashamed at the lies he's written disgusted me more than the lies themselves," she wrote later on Facebook.

The trial was postponed to December 7 to allow Chaouqui's new defence lawyer to get up to speed.