ROME
ANSA
(ANSA) – Rome, November 23 – PR expert Francesca Immacolata Chaouqui on Monday said she intends to appear in the courtroom on Tuesday for the first hearing in a Vatican trial over a document-leaking scandal in which she and five others were indicted at the weekend.
Chaouqui was indicted with former secretary of the COSEA commission on the Holy See’s economic-administrative structure Monsignor Lucio Angel Vallejo Balda, and his former assistant Nicola Maio.
The three are charged with conspiracy to commit a crime and with removing and distributing confidential Vatican documents.
Those indictments came together with those of two journalists, Emiliano Fittipaldi and Gianluigi Nuzzi, who are charged with using and distributing the allegedly stolen confidential information in their recent books, Avarice and Merchants in the Temple.
On Monday Chaouqui reiterated that she is innocent.
“I’ve decided that on Tuesday I’ll defend myself on trial, to show that not one paper ever passed from my hands to those of a journalist, any journalist, not only Emiliano and Gianluigi,” Chaouqui said on her Facebook page.
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