The Vatican went on a trial in a London court as a British financier demanded compensation for damage to its reputation due to a Vatican investigation into the €350 million investment in London property, AP News reported.
This is the first time the Holy See has been forced to face a foreign court. A Vatican tribunal had already convicted Raffaele Mincione on embezzlement charges and sentenced him to more than five years in prison for his involvement in the London deal. However, Mincione has filed a civil counterclaim against the Holy See’s secretariat of state in London’s High Court. He insists that he has acted in good faith.
On Wednesday, he asked the court to approve a series of statements claiming that he had indeed acted in good faith in his dealings with the secretariat of state. He also stated that the Vatican knowingly and lawfully entered into the deals in question and thus had no grounds to make any claims against him.
I am delighted that these proceedings in England are finally underway. I look forward to these issues being examined by an independent and internationally-respected judicial system.
The trial is expected to last several weeks and will include personal testimony from a senior Vatican official, Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra, the No. 3 in the secretariat of state.
Although several US lawsuits have tried to hold the Vatican accountable for clergy sexual abuse, they have always failed, as the Holy See could argue that it enjoys immunity as a sovereign state. However, a British court allowed the Mincione case to proceed, since it involved a commercial transaction not normally subject to sovereign immunity claims.
Case history
The case concerns the Vatican’s decision in 2013-2014 to invest an initial 200 million in a Mincione fund to acquire 45% of a London property, the former Harrod warehouse. The Vatican hoped to turn it into luxury apartments to then generate rental income as a long-term investment return.
By 2018, the Vatican Secretariat of State had decided to withdraw from the fund, dissatisfied with its performance but wanting to retain ownership of the property. Another London broker, Gianluigi Torzi, helped negotiate a €40 million payout to Mincione.
Vatican prosecutors alleged that Torzi and Mincione, who originally worked together, conspired to steal millions of euros from the Holy See. The deals formed the basis of a Vatican trial that ended in December with multiple convictions of nine of the 10 defendants, including Torzi and Mincione.
The prosecutors alleged that Mincione, whose foundation bought the Harrod’s warehouse at auction in 2012 for 129.5 million pounds (about $165 million) plus 8 million pounds of expenses, inflated the value of the site to 230 million pounds. They also accused Torzi of extorting a further 15 million euros from the Vatican to hand over control of the building after the Holy See realised it still did not own it.
