The businessman, who previously acted as investment manager for the Vatican in what became the London property scandal, filed a case Sept. 30 at London’s Commercial Court, the judicial forum which hears high-value business disputes, often between international actors.
Mincione and his companies WRM Capital Asset Management and Athena Capital filed the action for “commercial fraud,” naming the Holy See Secretariat of State as a defendant, together with the Swiss banks UBS and Credit Suisse, which was absorbed by UBS in a 2023 deal ordered and brokered by government banking authorities.
The lawsuit is the latest in a series of international legal claims brought by Mincione against the Vatican and various financial institutions in the fallout of the 2018 London property deal which saw Mincione sell the Vatican a London building as part of its early separation from Mincione’s investment fund.
The circumstances of the Vatican’s initial investment and the acrimonious and complicated process by which it acquired the building at 60 Sloane Ave. saw the Secretariat of State realize hundreds of millions of euros in losses and triggered a sprawling financial crimes trial in Vatican City.
At the end of an initial Vatican City trial in 2023, nine people were convicted of various financial crimes, including Mincione, who was found guilty of embezzlement for participating in the illegal misappropriation of Vatican funds in a deal which placed some 200 million euros under the investment manager’s control on the Secretariat of State’s behalf.
Mincione has strenuously denied any criminal action or intent, arguing that he had no way of knowing funds being invested by the Holy See’s governing secretariat had been illegally appropriated.
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