The High Court of England and Wales handed down its verdict Friday on a lawsuit brought by the investment manager Raffaele Mincione against his former client, the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
While the judge ruled that Mincione “fell below the standards of communication with the [Vatican] that could be described as good faith conduct,” he also rejected “very serious allegations levelled against [Mincione]... including particular allegations of dishonesty and particular allegations of conspiracy.”
Mincione was definitely the more strident of the two, insisting that he won “99.99% of the points” at issue in the case.
But with a criminal appeal looming in Vatican City, and ongoing lawsuits in Switzerland, did Mincione “win” in London — and if he did, will it be enough to help him win elsewhere?
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However bullish Mincione’s team may be in their assessment of the High Court’s Feb. 21 ruling, it seems hard to argue he didn’t lose the case, at least on the terms on which he brought the suit in the first place — asking the judge to declare he acted in “good faith” in his dealings with the Vatican in his management of some 200 million euros of their money and their subsequent parting of ways in 2018.
On that point the judge was fairly blunt: “In my judgment, on the facts shown at trial the Claimants fell below the standards of communication with the State that could be described as good faith conduct.”
“On the evidence I heard at trial, the [Vatican] had reason to consider itself utterly let down in its experience with [Mincione and his companies],” the judge said.
That being the case, it might be hard for some people to understand why Mincione declared
himself “100% satisfied” with the verdict. But, as with so much to do with the infamous London property deal, the real fight is in the details.
Mincione has long appeared to via his London lawsuit as just one front in a continent-wide legal battle with the Vatican prosecutors’ office and the Secretariat of State, who have successfully secured his conviction in Vatican City on charges of participating in institutional embezzlement, and the freezing of his assets in Switzerland.
Within that bigger picture, fighting for his freedom and fortune, vindicating his good name in court was likely a secondary concern behind getting an internationally credible legal decision clearing him of criminal wrongdoing or fraudulent business practices.
Speaking after the verdict, Mincione pointed out to The Pillar that the judge had made his admittedly very negative assessment in direct reference to the investment manager not working with or alerting the Secretariat of State to the likely nefarious carryings on of their own representative in the deal — Gianluigi Torzi.
Mincione points out, perhaps reasonably, that he had no duty to guard the interests after-the-fact of a former client that had moved quickly and aggressively to sever ties with him, especially after the Vatican put out an arrest warrant for him.
That’s not an unreasonable argument, in itself. And the judge did reject the Secretariat of State’s contention that Mincione was effectively engaged in a criminal conspiracy with Torzi to defraud the Vatican, which is, to be sure, a point in his favor.
Nevertheless, few businessmen would read the judge’s decision and welcome it as a ringing vindication of their professional reputation — rather, the major takeaway for Mincione would appear to be that he did nothing fraudulent or criminal.
Of course, for Mincione, having been convicted of financial crimes in Vatican City and facing a five-year prison sentence and the seizure of millions in assets, having a UK High Court judgement effectively declaring he broke no laws and violated no contracts is arguably more important to him than establishing his “good faith.”
Whether the ruling will make any difference in his other cases, though, is another matter.
While the UK judge rejected “particular allegations of dishonesty and particular allegations of conspiracy” against Mincione and his companies, it is worth considering that while those allegations might have been made strongly by the Vatican prosecutors during his trial, the Vatican City judges didn’t actually convict Mincione on those grounds.
Reasonable people can disagree with the logic of that verdict; Mincione certainly does, and he has launched lawsuits to establish he had no way of knowing he was, in effect, taking charge of “embezzled” Vatican funds.
But either way, a UK judge’s finding that he did not breach his contract or conspire to defraud the Secretariat of State is unlikely to weigh much with the appellate judges in Vatican City.
Whether Friday’s ruling will, as he says he hopes it might, help convince Swiss judges he’s been a victim of runaway prosecution in Vatican City and persuade them to unfreeze his assets there is harder to predict.
Mincione claims he’s facing a Kafka-esque legal nightmare, with a vindictive Vatican prosecutor trying to make a career at his expense and a city-state court convicting him of breaking laws he didn’t know existed about the use funds the Vatican’s own state department assured him was legitimate.
The Vatican argues he’s a canny operative who hoodwinked them out of hundreds of millions, and preyed upon their lack of business savvy.
The UK ruling on Friday did nothing to settle that dispute and, ultimately, only Mincione can decide for himself if the London lawsuit was worth the years of litigation and likely astronomical legal fees.
But the reality may be that, facing the loss of his wealth and freedom in the wake of the Vatican trial, he has no option but to pursue every legal avenue open to him, in every jurisdiction he can.
