Vatican ‘misrepresentations’ condemned in London court defeat over property case

VATICAN CITY: A British court has handed the Vatican a major defeat in a case linked to a property transaction in London with Church funds, in a ruling that revealed some of the Holy See’s inner workings and found it had made “appalling” misrepresentations.

The Crown Court in Southwark revoked an earlier order that had frozen funds of Gianluigi Torzi, an Italian businessman who the Vatican has charged with extortion, embezzlement, aggravated fraud and money laundering.

Torzi, who denies wrongdoing, was one of the middlemen in a complicated deal by the Vatican’s Secretariat of State in the purchase of a building in Chelsea that has since developed into a financial scandal. He spent 10 days in a Vatican jail last year. Five Vatican employees lost their jobs in 2019 over the deal and are still under investigation.

In the 42-page ruling, issued on March 10 and made public this week after the Vatican tried to keep it private, Judge Tony Baumgartner said he revoked an earlier ruling to freeze some of Torzi’s funds in London partly because the Vatican’s “non-disclosures and misrepresentations are so appalling”.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said there was no immediate comment on the ruling, adding that the Vatican’s investigation was continuing.

Vatican prosecutors have alleged that Torzi was part of a conspiracy to defraud the Secretariat of State, the Vatican’s most important department, and extort millions of euros from it, in part through fees the Vatican called exorbitant.

Torzi’s lawyers, Stuart Biggs and James Mullion of Janes Solicitors, said his dealings had been directly or indirectly approved by top Vatican officials, including Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin and his deputy for general affairs, Archbishop Edgar Pena Parra. The ruling says that during the hearings, Vatican lawyers attempted to show “the astonishment of higher authorities” over some of the financial details of the deal negotiated by two lower-level officials in the Secretariat, including a monsignor