One cardinal deciding on the next pope has had some embarrassing legal troubles

Yahoo! News - One cardinal deciding on the next pope has had some embarrassing legal troubles:

"ROME - If things had gone differently, one of the 115 men sequestered within Vatican walls this week to select the next pope might well have been somewhere equally confining but far less appealing: prison.

Cardinal Michele Giordano, archbishop of Naples, was charged in 1999 with allegedly funneling hundreds of thousands of dollars in church funds to his brother in what authorities said was a massive loan-sharking ring. The charges followed a two-year investigation in which prosecutors tapped the prelate's telephone and raided his offices.

A judge found him not guilty in December 2000. But the cardinal's legal troubles aren't over. In 2002, Giordano was convicted and sentenced to four and a half months' confinement for illegally subdividing a historic palace. The wealthy heiress who bequeathed the property is also suing the cardinal because he sought to convert the palace into apartments instead of a home for poor retired priests as she'd wished, according to Italian news reports."