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The Vatican is being sued in the High Court in London by a financier who claims he was unfairly convicted by the Holy See over a UK property deal on which it lost more than £100mn.
Lawyers acting for Raffaele Mincione argued on Wednesday that Vatican authorities had made “incoherent and confused” allegations against the businessman, who was convicted of embezzlement and money-laundering by the Vatican state court and sentenced to five and a half years in prison for his role in the ill-fated transaction. However, Mincione has never served jail time and has been based in London.
In a bid to clear his name, Mincione is seeking a declaration from the London court that he acted “in good faith” in his dealings with the Vatican. The case — which is expected to feature testimony from Archbishop Edgar Peña Parra, one of the Vatican’s most senior leaders at the time of the vexed property deal — will consider Mincione’s prosecution by the Holy See court in proceedings since criticised as being arcane and unfair.
The civil trial in England stems from an investment the Holy See made in a former Harrods warehouse in Chelsea, one of the wealthiest areas of London. The Vatican lost more than £100mn in 2022 when it sold the property to private equity group Bain Capital.
The Holy See spent more than €350mn to acquire the property between 2014 and 2018, and the loss led to a broad review of the way in which the Catholic Church handles its finances.
Mincione was one of seven defendants — including one of the Vatican’s most powerful former officials, Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu — convicted in December by the Vatican court in the landmark case for their roles in the controversial property deal.
The high-profile proceedings — seen as part of Pope Francis’s attempt to clean up the church’s notoriously scandal-tainted finances — were dubbed by Italian media as the “Vatican’s trial of the century” as it was the first time that such a high-ranking church official, or their financial advisers, had been brought to court for alleged wrongdoing.
Though a highly respected former Italian prosecutor presided over the trial as the chief judge, both the defence and independent legal scholars questioned the credibility and fairness of the Vatican court’s proceedings, which were also marked by multiple rule changes over the course of the investigation.
The London lawsuit was initially filed in 2020 prior to the Vatican trial and while the investigation into the deal was still under way.
In written arguments, Mincione’s barrister, Charles Samek KC, said the Vatican had made an “incoherent and confused allegation of conspiracy” and that its claims lacked “factual basis”.
Mincione, who is due to testify on Thursday, has previously argued that the Vatican was aware of the risks and that it had lost money because of its own poor decisions.
He has said the property’s value was justified by independent auditors and third-party consultants, and denies any wrongdoing.
Defending the Vatican against the claim, Charles Hollander KC said Mincione viewed the transaction as a way of “extracting money” from the Vatican.
“That involved a fraud on it, and misrepresentations made by Mr Mincione,” Hollander said in written arguments. “The events with which the Vatican court were concerned involve deep-seated corruption, fraud and embezzlement over a period of years.”
He added that the Vatican court “had the benefit of hearing from pretty well all relevant parties . . . reaching conclusions spanning a lengthy period of time based on the evidence before it”.
The Vatican has previously invoked the principle of sovereign immunity to avoid participating in foreign court proceedings, including prosecutions for financial scandals in Italy in the 1980s and child sex abuse cases in various countries in more recent years.
The Vatican publicly defended the integrity of its own court proceedings after the verdict in December, insisting that the the complex financial case — in which some of the accused were cleared of some, or all wrongdoing — had been conducted “with full respect for the rights of the defendants”.
