Catholic church: Auditor Libero Milone claims Vatican sacked him After he found ‘secret’ Swiss accounts

Ex-auditor says he was sacked after stumbling on millions in secret accounts overseen by ‘a nun and a pencil’.

Pope Francis meets Libero Milone, right, in the Vatican in April, 2016. Picture: Reuters

An auditor sacked from the Vatican has claimed that he was targeted after investigating secret funds linked to a west London property investment that are now at the centre of an internal inquiry.

Libero Milone, who was hired by the Pope as chief auditor in 2015, said he was ousted two years ago after stumbling across millions of dollars secretly held in Swiss accounts by the Vatican. “Some people got worried I was about to uncover something I shouldn’t see,” he told the Financial Times. “We were getting too close to information that they wanted to be secret. They fabricated a situation for me to be thrown out.”

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Last month Vatican police seized computers and documents from the secretariat of state – the Holy See’s de facto government — while investigating alleged irregularities in the purchase of the building in Chelsea.

When Mr Milone was dismissed in 2017 he was accused of spying by Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, second in command at the secretariat of state at the time. Now, after the Vatican’s decision to start an investigation into the Swiss funds, Mr Milone has claimed that it was his digging into those same accounts — which had been overseen “by a nun and a pencil” — that got him sacked. “They are nice nuns, but they didn’t have a clue,” he said.

The Times