ITALY
Telegraph (UK)
By Nick Squires, Rome 23 Jun 2014
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 €250,000 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 €100,000 euros to the blackmailers in return for their silence but finally called in the police after they demanded an additional €150,000.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.