Green light for $14m Vatican suit

A multi-million-euro wrongful dismissal case filed against the Vatican by the Pope’s former auditor-general has been given the green light.

Former Vatican auditor-general Libero Milone. Picture: Reuters

A multi-million-euro wrongful dismissal case filed against the Vatican by the Pope’s former auditor-general has been given the green light after a panel of three judges threw out a litany of legal objections raised by the Holy See’s Secretariat of State.

Libero Milone and his deputy, Ferruccio Panicco, will have their day in court in mid-May after ­battling for more than five years to show they were forced to resign and even threatened with criminal prosecution for uncovering fin­ancial corruption by senior Vatican officials, including now disgraced cardinal Angelo Becciu.

A 14-page ruling by the panel of judges signed on March 9 but communicated to the parties on Wednesday (Thursday AEDT) rejected arguments against the case put up by lawyers for the Secretariat of State as well as the office of the auditor-general and Milone’s former department.

Milone, a Dutch-born, Italian-speaking former boss of Deloittes and his deputy, Panicco, a financial risk specialist, were appointed personally by Francis in 2015 to work alongside the late cardinal George Pell on a campaign to reform and clean up the Vatican’s antiquated accounting and investment systems.

Cardinal Becciu, long seen as Pell’s arch-nemesis and a principal opponent to the reforms, is one of 10 senior officials now facing court on charges of embezzlement and financial crimes.

Milone was marched out of his office by Vatican gendarmes in 2017 and forced to resign amid accusations of spying on senior Vatican curia – charges he always claimed emerged in the wake of his team’s unearthing of high-level corruption.

In a series of Kafkaesque manoeuvres to stymie the case earlier this year, lawyers for the Secretary of State, Pietro Parolin, suggested his was the wrong department to be sued because Milone had “no relationship” with it while the current auditor-­general’s office claimed it had no record of the more than 500 pages of documents sent about the case – while then arguing it had not had time to read them.

In their ruling, the three judges rejected arguments that the court lacked jurisdiction to hear the lawsuit and found Milone’s legal team had not only provided documentation to substantiate the claims but also enough evidence to support the case going to trial.

Vatican delaying tactics over the past year included attempts to dismiss the case because a statue of limitations had expired and an unprecedented refusal – overturned by the panel – to allow Milone to be represented by a second lawyer, Romano Vaccarella, a former judge on the Italian constitutional bench.

Last year, Milone told The Australian that his discovery of cardinals doing bizarre things had led to a strategy of retaliation and delays that included threats of criminal prosecution for spying.

The lawsuit was filed formally in November last year and documents from Milone’s legal team included a large file of evidence he said would prove he had uncovered corruption at the highest levels of the curia.

Milone and Panicco have filed for more than €9m ($14.3m) to compensate for professional damages and lost earnings.

A hearing is scheduled for May 10.