The Vatican is said to be lining up a sale of the £299m London property at the centre of an alleged financial scandal that has engulfed the Holy See.
The former Harrods warehouse at 60 Sloane Avenue in Chelsea, SW3, will reportedly be sold on after a high-ranking cardinal was accused of misusing Church funds to buy it while he worked for the Vatican’s Secretariat of State.
A trial opened in Vatican City yesterday in which Vatican prosecutors alleged that 10 defendants, including several London financiers and church employees, engaged in embezzlement, fraud and corruption.
Among them is the cardinal, Angelo Becciu, 73, who is charged with spending €350m (£299m) of church money on a botched deal to buy the property, which went on to incur huge losses. He denies wrongdoing.
The saga began in 2014, when the Secretariat of State allegedly invested more than €200m, much of it from charitable contributions, into a fund run by Italian investment broker Raffaele Mincione, securing about 45% of the building.
Mincione was subsequently accused of deceiving the Vatican, which in 2018 tried to end the relationship with him. It then allegedly turned to another broker, Gianluigi Torzi, for help in buying up the rest of the building, but later accused him of extortion.
At the time, Becciu was in post as deputy secretary of state. Over the years in question, the organisation is said to have sunk more than €350m into the investment. All defendants deny wrongdoing.
Now, the 183,000 sq ft property is to be sold on, said Juan Antonio Guerrero Alves, head of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, speaking to the official Vatican News website.
While further details of a potential sale are unclear, any deal is likely to crystallise the losses incurred by the Holy See on the site, which another cardinal described as “enormous” in an interview with Reuters last year.
Becciu, meanwhile, was sacked by the Pope in September, as reports of financial misdeeds emerged. The charges against him include allegedly channelling money to businesses run by his brothers in Sardinia.
In April, the Pope said that cardinals and bishops accused of crimes would be tried by conventional judges, not by cardinals, which was previously the case.
The Vatican’s new finance boss, Juan Antonio Guerrero, has said it is now being more transparent about its affairs.
Last week, the Vatican published details of its holdings, including more than 4,000 properties in Italy and 1,120 in other European cities. The 30-page document reportedly shows further property holdings in Geneva, Lausanne and Paris.
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