Italian high court faults prosecutors in Vatican-linked case

Italy’s ultimate tribunal has faulted prosecutors for withholding grounds benefiting the cardinal fishy successful the Vatican’s fraud and embezzlement proceedings successful a parallel lawsuit successful the Italian courts.

The Court of Cassation ordered the Tribunal of Review to see that grounds earlier deciding whether to uphold an planetary apprehension warrant for Gianluigi Torzi, a London-based Italian broker who is wanted successful some Italy and the Vatican for alleged fiscal crimes.

The Cassation annulled the warrant successful October but the reasons for the determination were lone released connected Saturday. The tribunal agreed with Torzi’s lawyers that Italian prosecutors had failed to crook implicit his defence grounds to the justice who initially authorized the apprehension warrant successful March.

When Torzi’s lawyers appealed the warrant to the Tribunal of Review, the appeals judges should person considered whether Torzi’s missing defence materials provided a “decisive” value successful his favor, the Cassation judges wrote. The Tribunal of Review upheld the apprehension warrant successful June without making that evaluation.

The lawsuit successful Italy was launched aft Vatican prosecutors had already been investigating Torzi for his relation successful the Vatican’s bungled 350 million-euro concern successful a London residential property. Vatican prosecutors person accused Torzi of trying to extort the Vatican of 15 cardinal euros to crook implicit afloat ownership of the property. Torzi says the lawsuit is the effect of misunderstandings.

The Vatican tribunal indicted him successful July, but his presumption successful the proceedings has been successful limbo due to the fact that of the extradition proceedings betwixt Italy and Britain and the legitimacy of the Italian apprehension warrant that launched them. The Vatican doesn’t person an extradition pact with Britain.

In a connection Saturday, Torzi’s lawyer, Marco Franco, said the ruling appears to let the Tribunal for Review the abstraction “to marque a new, broad evaluation” of the case. He said Torzi hoped for a “more serene cognition by prosecutors toward the hunt for information without being deprived of his freedom.”