Sinclair Davidson seems very excited by the prospect that a claim by an Italian newspaper that a (now) ex-Cardinal transferred more than a million dollars to Australia for the purposes of paying off witnesses (or just one witness?) to give evidence against his internal enemy Pell might be true.
Yet even some of his culture war brainwashed and dumbed down by "conservative" media followers are wondering how it would be done, exactly.
Because, yeah - bribing witnesses from afar is more than likely going to involve quite a few people in a chain, with all of them aware of how sensationally corrupt and damaging to them and the Church such a bribe would be. And we're not talking, say, life-long mafia members who have always lived off corruption, either. There would, it would be virtually guaranteed, be people involved who were formerly at no risk of ever being convicted of a crime who would have to have decided that it was worth the risk because they really, really dislike Pell. (Or who were willing to take a piece of the money along the way - but again, if you're not routinely corrupt, you don't usually turn corrupt overnight.)
I therefore strongly suspect the allegation will come to nothing (or nothing serious.) As I have said before, Sinclair's excitability factor over dubious claims means any barrister should always reject him during jury selection.
PS: it is true that a Cardinal getting sacked is a rare event; but there has been suspicion of financial corruption around this one for years, it seems.
Sinkers probably does not know but the police would have looked at all bank accounts and purchases in a crime involving a high profile figure ( at least they do here in NSW).
ReplyDeleteWho did the Cardinal know in Australia. He would have to be part of the Catholic hierarchy if true. how was the money transferred from Rome to here and to who before it got to the people who wanted tp implicate Pell??
Call in Poirot
No it had to be that way. The only strange thing about this story is that they have singled out an individual when in reality we are looking at a network. A network much bigger than the individual named. It takes a very powerful network to take effective control of the Victorian police and justice systems. It takes many decades and a great deal of work to infiltrate in this way.
ReplyDeleteNow maybe you are right. Maybe the individual named will either get off or the whole incident will be sent down the Orwellian memory hole. But what must be understood is that our institutions didn't go crazy all on their own and at the same time. This is powerful influence coming in from overseas. And for some reason Victoria has been chosen as the staging ground for this dominance.
Its not an unlikely allegation its a near certain allegation. He's not likely to be a totally innocent patsy. He's likely to be part of the initial conspiracy. If they are throwing the cardinal to the wolves then they must be paying him off to be the scapegoat and also trying to bullshit everyone that it was just a few bad eggs. At this point they either promise this fellow the moon and stars to take the fall. Or they set out to kill him off before they risk the cardinal speaking out about the massive scope of the problem.
ReplyDeleteBut if the evidence wasn't totally solid they wouldn't be sacrificing a rook, a bishop or a castle. You only sacrifice a cardinal when you have a lot more to lose.
Its funny that you reason it out that it would have to be a much bigger scandal. Then having reasoned it out pretty clearly you flip and pretend that there will be no scandal at all.
ReplyDeleteI see a pattern here fella. One day you could wind up in the stocks for this sort of behaviour.