VATICAN CITY (LifeSiteNews) — A Vatican court has ruled against the Vatican’s former auditor general Libero Milone and his recently deceased deputy, rejecting their lawsuit alleging unfair dismissal by the Secretariat of State, and ordering him to pay over €110,000 to the Holy See.
Details of the court ruling were issued by Vatican News, the Holy See’s in-house news outlet.
According to the report, the court rejected the lawsuit against the Secretariat of State, jointly brought by Milone and his recently-deceased deputy Ferrucio Panicco. The court rejected the pair’s accusations of “forced resignations” at the hand of Secretariat officials, and additionally declared that the Secretariat of State was entirely unconnected from all the actions the lawsuit attributed it with.
Milone – a former chairman and CEO of Deloitte Italy, a multinational auditing and consultancy firm – was appointed Auditor General of the Holy See in 2015, together with his deputy, Ferruccio Panicco, an ex-chief auditor for the Italian manufacturer Indesit. Their time in office came to an abrupt end in the summer of 2017.
On November 4, 2022 they filed a 53-page lawsuit against the Secretariat of State for the amount of $9.25 million to “obtain proper reparations from suffered damages,” resulting from what they described as their unjust dismissal in 2017.
Milone, as the last remaining alive in the lawsuit, is now ordered to pay €24,668.00 to the Secretariat of State and €24,668.00 euros to the Office of the Auditor General for their legal fees. A further €64,140 must be paid by Milone to be split between the same offices.
Background to trial
The suit argued that they were unjustly accused of spying and embezzlement in June of 2017 by Cardinal Angelo Becciu – at the time, second in charge of the Secretariate of State – accusations which, they argue, stemmed from their audit of Vatican finances which uncovered widespread corruption within the hierarchy of the Holy See.
They wrote in their lawsuit that a “picture will emerge of the leadership of the Holy See that is very little compatible with the mission entrusted to it by Providence.”
Milone has continuously insisted that Becciu’s accusations against him and Panicco are absolutely false.
He also consistently argued that the the accusations were the result of his audit uncovering uncomfortable financial corruption like the infamous London apartment deal which cost the Vatican hundreds of millions of euros, investments in pharmaceutical companies that produced abortifacients and contraceptives contrary to the Church’s moral doctrine, embezzlement by high-ranking cardinals and officials, and money laundering conducted by the Secretariat of State and the Vatican Bank.
“I was threatened with arrest,” Milone said of his forced resignation. “The head of the Gendarmerie [the Vatican police] intimidated me to force me to sign a resignation letter that they had already prepared weeks in advance.”
Together with the late George Cardinal Pell – first prefect of the Secretariat for the Economy – Milone was apparently “increasingly effective” and “came too close to uncovering dangerous things.”
Indeed, in a curious coincidence of timing, only days after Milone went public with his revelations about his sudden departure from the Vatican, it was announced that Pell was to face charges for allegations of historic sexual abuse in his native Australia.
Though no evidence has yet been proven in court, Becciu was reported to have been financially linked to Pell’s trial. In late 2020, an Italian paper argued that Becciu spent more than $800,000 to discredit Pell during his sexual abuse trial, and later reports stated that a total of $1.7 billion (AUS $2.3 billion) was sent to Australia from the Vatican, between 2014 and 2020. Suspicions were nevertheless raised, particularly given that the Australian bishops reportedly had no knowledge of the money.
Milone’s case comes under fire
At the time of Milone’s and Panicco’s firing, the Vatican claimed that it had conducted a more than seven-month investigation into Milone and Panicco.
But in 2018 the charges were later dropped when the Vatican’s chief prosecutor stated that not only had there been no investigations, but there were no sentences filed against Milone in the Vatican’s legal record. Despite this, the Holy See refused to release a statement clearing Milone and Panicco’s names, notwithstanding numerous requests over a number of years.
During questioning as part of Becciu’s own trial, the former official at the Secretariat of State claimed that it was Pope Francis himself who intervened to fire Milone.
Becciu himself was found guilty of “embezzlement” by a Vatican court in December. He was sentenced to five and a half years in jail, along with a €8,000 fine and a permanent ban on holding office.
READ: Cardinal Becciu given 5 and a half years in jail by Vatican court for financial crimes
After Milone and Panicco filed their suit, the Vatican repeatedly sought to interfere with its proceeding, even rejecting their long-standing lawyer without giving an explanation. At the time, “a source close to Milone” was reported as stating: “Refusing to authorize Vaccarella is a rudimentary violation of due process and shows how desperate they [Vatican officials] are.”
Vaccarella is a distinguished lawyer, having represented the country’s former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, with the source saying he “would have been formidable.”
Just as with the December ruling in the Becciu case, one key aspect stands out as being identical in the case of Milone and Panicco – namely, the Secretariat of State, led by Cardinal Pietro Parolin, appears to end each case as the undisputed and perhaps surprise victor.
Ruling against Milone, the court was adamant that the Secretariat of State be cleared from any involvement with the alleged actions taken against Milone, and that even more so “conduct causative of the damage” could not be attributed to individuals acting in the name or on behalf of the Secretariat of State.