In the same year, WRM Group was contacted by the Swiss investment bank Credit Suisse, acting on behalf of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. Credit Suisse sought WRM’s advice and expertise concerning a potential investment in an Angolan energy company called Falcon Oil. WRM was retained to carry out due diligence and to undertake, implement and manage this investment. Given the technical complexity of the operation, WRM Group was tasked structure and manage it through a regulated Luxembourg fund.

Consequently, to pursue this potential investment, Credit Suisse and another Swiss bank, Citco, acting – in some unknown capacity – for the Secretariat, subscribed USD 200.5 million in shares of the Athena Global Opportunities Fund (“GOF”), a sub-fund of the Luxembourg regulated fund Athena Capital Fund SICAV-FIS, which is managed by WRM Group.

After a lengthy and detailed due diligence process, WRM Group informed the Holy See in March and May 2014 that it would not recommend pursuing an investment in the Angolan oil company. The project was later abandoned.

Following this decision, it was mutually agreed with the Holy See that GOF would be used to make a number of investments, and a legally binding agreement was signed to this effect. As part of GOF’s investment strategy, and again after numerous discussions and mutual agreement with Credit Suisse and the Holy See, GOF invested €79 million to acquire a 45% stake in another sub-fund of Athena Capital Fund SICAV-FIS which indirectly owned the 60 Sloane Avenue property. This investment effectively gave the Holy See an indirect minority interest in the property.

The Holy See and its advisors saw in the property a significant investment opportunity, which was confirmed in December 2017 when the property consulting firm Strutt & Parker valued the property at £275 million and gave it a development value (on the assumption that the development was completed) of £567 million. GOF’s original €79 million investment for a 45% stake in the property was therefore worth £123.7 million just three years later, and it had the potential to reach a value of just over £255 million once the project was completed. The significant increase in the value of the property at the time was partly due to the fact that WRM Group had successfully obtained planning permission in 2016 from the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to convert the property into a high-end residential and retail space, for a period of three years. It was due to be renewed in 2019.

In November 2018, the Secretariat of State of the Holy See abruptly decided to cease its relationship with WRM Group and to acquire the remaining 55% share in the company which owned the London property. The Secretariat ultimately paid £168 million for the remaining shares in the property, and also took on the development’s £100m mortgage. Again, the property at the time was given an independent development value of £567 million.

Rather than seek to transfer the shares directly to itself or an affiliated entity, the Holy See demanded that the shares be transferred to a company called GUTT SA (“GUTT”), controlled by Italian businessman Gianluigi Torzi. GUTT therefore became the legal and beneficial owner of the property, on behalf of the Secretariat of State of the Holy See. Once GUTT took control of the shares, WRM Group and Mr. Mincione no longer had any control, interest or involvement with GOF, the Holy See, Credit Suisse or Citco.

According to allegations made by the Office of the Promoter of Justice of the Vatican (“OPJ”) and reports in the press, Torzi later sold the property directly to the Vatican, which became its sole owner. The OPJ later alleged that Torzi had structured GUTT’s shares in a way that enabled him to retain effective control of the building, enabling him to “extort” the Holy See for millions of euros in exchange for ceding control of GUTT, to which the Holy See agreed. Torzi denies these allegations.

The value of the property is likely to have suffered in December 2019 when, having taken full control, the Secretariat of State of the Holy See decided to change the planning permission for the property and therefore allowed the original 2016 planning permission obtained by WRM to lapse. This, combined with other factors such as declining demand for commercial real estate caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, likely caused a decline in the total value of the property. However, this cannot be confirmed as the Holy See has never provided any evidence to this effect, despite this issue being central to the allegations made against Mr. Mincione and others in the Vatican trial. The OPJ has alleged that its investigations focusing on the property have shown damage to the assets of the Secretariat of at least €300 million, but has yet to provide any evidence to substantiate this claim. Various numbers have been floated by prosecutors and other Vatican officials to quantify the supposed losses incurred by the Holy See from its investment in the property, again without rationale or evidence.

In 2019, the OPJ initiated an investigation into the Holy See’s acquisition of the property. This was part of a larger, sprawling inquiry into the activities of Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, who was the substitute for General Affairs in the Secretariat of State of the Holy See from 2011 to 2018. Becciu was no longer in office when the Holy See decided to purchase the remaining shares in the property from WRM through GUTT/Torzi, however he had been in charge at the time of the Holy See’s initial investment in GOF and the subsequent acquisition of a minority indirect stake in the London property. Mr. Becciu has no relationship with WRM Group or Mr. Mincione. Virtually all of WRM’s interactions at the time were with Credit Suisse, which acted on behalf of the Holy See. It is also worth noting that neither Credit Suisse nor any of its employees have ever been accused of any wrongdoing in connection with this case, despite the fact that they oversaw virtually all interactions with Mr. Mincione and WRM Group.

As part of the OPJ’s two-year-long investigation, in 2020 Vatican authorities served search and seizure warrants on Mr. Mincione. To defend his name and reputation, in the same year Mr. Mincione applied to an English court for a Declaratory Relief judgment, i.e., a formal declaration from the court that he had acted properly and in good faith in connection with the sale of property to the Holy See. While Mr. Mincione was not accused of any wrongdoing at the time, he sought confirmation from an independent court that he had done nothing wrong in his dealings with Credit Suisse and the Holy See.

Throughout its investigation from 2019 to 2021, the OPJ increasingly relied on the use of highly controversial tactics incompatible with the rule of law and basic norms of justice. On four separate occasions, the OPJ obtained new powers delegated to it by the Pope through medieval ad hoc instruments known as rescritti. These instruments have granted the OPJ huge discretion to act in derogation to the existing law and adopt any measures (such as arrests, asset freezes, etc.) in the manner it deems best without the supervision of a judge. The rescritti therefore allow the OPJ to conduct its case outside the constraints of the Vatican Penal Code and the Vatican Code of Criminal Procedure. For example, the OJP used the power granted by the rescritti to bypass procedural constrains relating to the issuance of an arrest warrant for Mr Mincione. The OPJ issued an arrest warrant for Mr Mincione in 2020 which, under Vatican law, should have been issued by a judge. However, through the rescritti, the OPJ was able to bypass this procedural constraint. As a result, Mr Mincione’s legal team only became aware of the arrest warrant by chance, shortly before a hearing on 27 July 2021, when a copy of the arrest warrant was mistakenly included in the papers for the hearing.

Article 6 of the European Convention of Human Rights ensures that everyone has the right to a fair trial. The rescritti are unfair in both principle and practice because they have granted the OPJ unlimited investigatory powers which have no judicial control or legal constraint. The powers of the rescritti, which allow the OPJ to retroactively correct breaches of the Vatican Criminal Law, such as its issuance of an arrest warrant against Mr Mincione, clearly are incompatible with the right to a fair trial.

It is a fundamental principle of the rule of law that a defendant is entitled to know what the law is, what the case is that they have to meet, what the criminal procedure is that is being used against them, their rights and protections under the law, and whether this will change from one day to the next. The nature of the powers of the rescritti are such that Mr. Mincione cannot know what legal procedures are being used against him, nor his rights or protections under the law.

In July 2021, the OPJ concluded its investigation and announced indictments against ten individuals, including Mr. Mincione, who was accused of fraud, effecting a number of transactions through his companies to alter the true value of the property, misconduct in public office, three counts of embezzlement, and self-laundering. The allegations centre on the sale of the London property, which the OPJ claimed was made at an inflated price and in collusion with several other defendants, including Torzi. All of the defendants have denied any wrongdoing.

To prosecute this unprecedented case, in which the Vatican would act simultaneously as the victim, judge and prosecutor, the Vatican appointed Alessandro Diddi, a well-known Italian mafia defence lawyer, as chief prosecutor. This is understood to be his first prosecution.

Diddi’s controversial tactics and shambolic approach have resulted in numerous setbacks for the prosecution, especially on contact with the robust judicial systems of other countries. For example, in 2021 Diddi attempted to freeze three UK bank accounts belonging to Gianluigi Torzi. While the request was initially granted, it was overturned in March 2021 by HHJ Baumgartner who held that the material presented by the OJP to request the freeze were “in some instances, egregious” and that to keep the order in place would “make a mockery of the process”. HHJ Baumgartner found that the materials submitted requesting the freeze “side-track[ed] into submission and, more often, sweeping assertion.” He declared that the witness statement provided as evidence “is not signed, nor does it contain a statement of truth.” These proceedings further backfired on the prosecution when evidence was presented that senior Vatican officials at the Secretariat of State, including the Holy See’s Secretary of State, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, had personally authorised the acquisition of the remaining shares in the London property. Cardinal Parolin is not a defendant in the Vatican case.

In December 2022, the prosecution suffered a major embarrassment when the credibility of its star witness collapsed. Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, the man who managed the Secretariat of State’s €600 million asset portfolio and who therefore played a major role in overseeing the London property transaction, had started working with the prosecution in August 2020 and was its key witness against most of the defendants, including Mr. Mincione. In exchange, Perlasca escaped prosecution for his role in this story. When Perlasca testified before the court in December 2022, his testimony suffered a major blow when the prosecution was forced to introduce into evidence a series of text messages which revealed that Perlasca had been persuaded to provide false witness testimony against the defendants by a third party who was seeking revenge against Cardinal Becciu in relation to a separate matter. Diddi appears to have known about this evidence for a number of months, before he was forced to present it to the court.

The prosecution faced yet another major setback in July 2023, when it was forced to admit to the Vatican court that it has “wrongly asserted” for years that the investment into the GOF fund by Credit Suisse has been financed with money from Peter’s Pence, a fund composed of donations by ordinary worshippers and intended for philanthropic works. This allegation, which the prosecution had loudly and continuously asserted in court and in the press and which formed a key component of the case against – and character assassination of – Mr. Mincione, has now been definitively rejected. Diddi was therefore forced to admit that the funds which Credit Suisse used as collateral for the monies placed in the GOF fund had in fact come from the IOR, the Vatican’s commercial bank.

The case in the Vatican is now in its third year and is nearing its conclusion, with many expecting a verdict to be delivered before the end of the year. The prosecution has requested a total of just over 73 years of prison for the ten defendants, including over 11 years for Mr. Mincione, as well as the seizure of nearly €400 million in assets from the defendants. Moreover, the Secretariat of State of the Holy See has requested that the defendants pay €177 million in additional compensation for “moral and reputational damages” to the Holy See caused by the media coverage of the Vatican’s “trial of the century”, which has received considerable attention in 130 countries, including considerable criticism of the country’s archaic judicial system, human rights violations and opaque proceedings. Finally, the IOR, the Vatican’s only commercial bank, which is a civil party to the case, has asked for approximately €1 million in fines from the defendants. In total, the various Vatican parties have requested nearly €600 million in fines from the defendants, several times more than what the Holy See has ever claimed it lost on the London property.

At present, civil parties are being heard by the three judges overseeing the trial. These interventions will be followed by those of the defence attorneys for the defendants, which will last throughout October and November 2023. A final verdict is therefore expected sometime in December 2023.

In parallel, proceedings before the Court of Appeal of England and Wales regarding WRM’s request for Declaratory Relief are ongoing. The Secretariat of State of the Holy See has repeatedly sought to delay these proceedings as much as possible, first by unsuccessfully challenging the jurisdiction of the English courts to hear this case, and then by trying to pause the proceedings until the end of the trial in the Vatican. After an initial stay was granted, WRM Group secured a major victory on July 26, 2022, when the English Court of Appeal decided to allow the declaratory relief proceedings to go ahead. This marks the first time in the Vatican’s 2,000-year history that the nation faces trial before an English court. The Court of Appeal lifted an earlier stay on WRM’s claim for declaratory relief which, as stated in the first instance judgment, had the “… effect to deprive…” the WRM Group companies and Raffaele Mincione “… of their right of access to a court having jurisdiction over bona fide claims, contrary to Article 6 ECHR. …” (European Convention on Human Rights).

The declaratory relief proceedings are now being heard before the English courts and the Secretariat can no longer delay justice after years of attempts to avoid this case being heard in an impartial and transparent jurisdiction.

For over five years, Raffaele Mincione has been dragged through an opaque, unfair and heavily mediatised investigation and trial which has become known at the Vatican’s “trial of the century”. The ongoing saga has damaged his reputation, hindered his and WRM’s business, and caused significant moral and financial harm. Mr. Mincione has always defended his innocence and rejects every allegation made against him.

As the trial nears its conclusion, the prosecution has yet to present any evidence to substantiate the allegations made against Mr. Mincione. The entire case against him rests on the premise that the Vatican acquired the London property at an inflated price, yet no supporting evidence has been presented to back up this claim or even to show that the Vatican ever lost money on the property. Instead, successive independent valuations of the property have all shown that the investment was priced fairly. Moreover, there is ample evidence to show that senior Vatican officials were well aware and supportive of every step in this process.

Rather than admit their own incompetence, Vatican officials are attempting to shift the blame onto others by claiming the existence of a complex conspiracy to defraud the Holy See. The reality is much simpler than this: Credit Suisse, acting on behalf of the Holy See, made a good investment in a promising luxury real estate development which rapidly grew in value. The Holy See’s subsequent decision to abruptly sever ties early with WRM Group, followed by its incompetent management of the property, likely negatively affected the property’s value.

Throughout the investigation and the trial, the prosecution has relied heavily on unscrupulous tactics that would be illegal in any other jurisdiction and are in complete violation of the European Convention on human rights. The Vatican is the only country in Europe not to have signed the Convention, along with Belarus and Russia.  Mr. Mincione’s right to a fair trial has undoubtedly been repeatedly violated.