Vatican tribunal hands down fines to auditor who blew whistle

Libero Milone, who investigated financial irregularities with George Pell, has lost his unfair dismissal case.

Pope Francis is greeted by Libero Milone in 2016. Picture: Reuters

The Vatican’s first auditor-general, Libero Milone, sacked without explanation in 2017 while investigating financial irregularities with the late Australian cardinal George Pell, has been ordered to pay nearly €50,000 ($82,000) in legal fees after a tribunal rejected his €9m lawsuit for wrongful dismissal.

The decision was reported only in Italian via the Vatican News and appeared designed to distance the Holy See’s Secretariat of State and its head, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, from the events of 2017.

Mr Milone, a former chairman and CEO of Deloitte and his late deputy, Ferruccio Panicco, filed the lawsuit in 2022 after the unexplained double sacking which unfolded in the wake of their discovery of financial irregularities in Vatican finances.

The tribunal judgment stated that after “careful examination” any suggestion that the Secretariat of State was involved in the dismissal “must be excluded”.

The two men had been appointed by Pope Francis in 2015 as part of a campaign, led by Pell, to clean up the Vatican finances and bring its accounting processes to international standards of transparency.

Pell and the auditor’s team had become suspicious about a property investment and asked to examine documentation about an opaque deal to finance and acquire a luxury commercial property in London. The building, in Sloane Avenue, would ultimately be sold at a loss to the Vatican of more than €100m.

Mr Milone and Panicco, who died of cancer late last year, later revealed they had been accused of spying and that the order to resign or face criminal charges had been issued by the now disgraced Cardinal Angelo Becciu, then the number two in the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.

Francis sacked Becciu in 2020 and last month, after a 2½- year trial focused on the London property deal, he was found guilty of embezzlement and sentenced to 5½ years’ jail. Nine other co-­defendants were found guilty of an array of financial crimes.

However, in its detailed decision on the wrongful dismissal case, the Vatican tribunal rejected claims for lost earnings, reputational damage and breach of contract and categorically refused to accept any responsibility for the seizing of the two men’s computers which also contained Panicco’s medical documentation and resulted in delays to his treatment for cancer.

The judgment ordered Mr ­Milone to “refund in favour of the defendant parties” a total of €49,336.00, of which €24,668.00 should be paid “to the Secretariat of State of the Holy See and €24,668 to the Office of the Auditor General; Panicco’s estate was ordered to repay €64,140 with €32,070 earmarked for the Secretariat of State and €32,070 to the Office of the Auditor General.

Mr Milone was unavailable for comment following the ruling. However, it is understood that his lawyers are carefully studying the judgment.