NEW YORK — One of the suspects in the The Vatican’s great financial trial has formally complained to the United Nations that Pope Francis violated his human rights by authorizing mass surveillance during the investigation.
A lawyer for Raffaele Mincione, a London-based financier, filed a complaint last week with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights under a special procedure that allows individuals or groups to provide the UN with information about alleged rights abuses in countries or to land. institutions.
The filing marks the latest and most high-profile complaint about the Vatican process, highlighting the peculiarity of the Vatican criminal justice system and its apparent incompatibility with European and democratic norms. The Vatican does an absolute monarchy where the Pope has supreme legislative, executive and judicial power.
The trial, which started in 2021, and ended in December, focused on the Holy See’s money-losing €350 million investment in a London property, but also included other tangents. Vatican prosecutors alleged that real estate agents and Vatican officials defrauded the Holy See of tens of millions of euros in fees and commissions, then extorted the Holy See for 15 million euros ($16.5 million) to relinquish control of the property .
The trial ended in December with convictions for nine out of ten defendants, including Mincione and a once-powerful cardinal, Angelo Becciu. The court’s motivations for the verdict have still not been published, but both Vatican prosecutors and the nine convicted defendants have announced they will appeal.
Mincione’s complaint to the UN focused on the Pope’s role in the investigation, an area that was labeled as problematic by lawyers during the process and external experts in its aftermath.
The complaint cited four secret executive decrees that Francis signed in 2019 and 2020 that gave Vatican prosecutors broad powers to investigate, including through uncontrolled wiretapping and to deviate from existing laws. The decrees only came to light just before the trial, were never officially published, and provided no rationale or timeline for monitoring or monitoring the wiretapping by an independent judge.
The chief prosecutor argued that Francis’ decrees provided unspecified “guarantees” for the suspects, and the judges at the time rejected defense motions that claimed they violated the fundamental right to a fair trial. In a somewhat complicated decision, the judges ruled that no violation of the principle of legality had occurred since Francis made the laws.
Mincione’s complaint also alleged that the tribunal is not independent or impartial, a claim the Vatican has previously rejected. Francis can hire and fire judges and prosecutors, and recently determined matters such as their compensation, pensions and term limits.
It is not clear what the UN will do with the complaint. The Geneva-based office has special rapporteurs, or experts, to monitor specific areas of human rights, including the judiciary and the independence of judges and lawyers.
Previous complaints to the UN Human Rights Office about the Vatican or the Catholic Church, in the areas of child sexual abuse and LGBTQ+ discrimination, resulted in letters from the UN Special Rapporteur to the Vatican’s UN Ambassador in Geneva, raising concerns were listed and responses and changes were requested.
Mincione has also sought to engage the Council of Europe on the matter, as the Holy See is subject to periodic review as part of the COE’s Moneyval process to guard against money laundering. In January, a British representative asked that the COE investigate the human rights situation in the Vatican given the outcome of the trial.
The chairman of the plenary session dodged the question.
In an ongoing lawsuit, Mincione has also sued the Vatican Secretariat of State in a British court over the reputational damage he says he has suffered as a result of the Vatican trial.
