Francesca Chaouqui, the woman at the center of the 2015 Vatileaks scandal, has claimed that Cardinal Becciu paid hundreds of thousands of euros to a UK private intelligence firm to “monitor and intervene” with the press for him, and not to negotiate the release of a captured religious sister, as he has claimed.
In an interview with the Italian newspaper La Verita, published March 11, Chaouqui said that the Inkerman Group contacted her after being contracted by Cardinal Becciu through Cecelia Marogna, the self-described intelligence and security expert who worked for the cardinal.
She told the paper that while the UK based intelligence firm was “officially” contracted to arrange the release of kidnapped religious, “in reality” the group was tasked with media monitoring and PR work on the cardinal’s behalf.
“An emissary from Inkerman contacted me after having had an initial conversation with Marogna, to understand some things,” Chaouqui claimed in the interview, saying that the group wanted to know “if it were normal to receive an assignment from the Holy See for intelligence activities.”
Chaouqui said that Inkerman employees were “perplexed” by the approach by Marogna, supposedly on behalf of the Vatican, because in previous jobs “they had always interfaced with the Secretariat of State and the commander of the [Vatican City] Gendarmerie for security.”
Chaouqui said she told the Inkerman contact that it was not normal for Vatican officials to subcontract...
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