Former Auditor Says He Uncovered Vatican ‘Viper’s Nest’ and Got Framed for It

ROME—The man hired to clean up the Vatican’s messy banking debacle in 2015 says he was threatened and robbed and forced to resign. Libero Milone, the former CEO of Deloitte in Italy, was handpicked by Pope Francis to sift through years of murky book work to try to bring the Vatican Bank into compliance with international norms on money laundering. But he was forced out in 2017 amid allegations he was spying on clerics, a claim he denies.

Milone and his assistant have now filed a $9.25 million lawsuit against the Vatican, saying they were falsely investigated, stolen from, and harassed for doing the job the pope hired them to do. “We did the right thing, we never spied, we have been honest, we did what we had to do, but unfortunately what we had to do was very embarrassing,” Milone told Vaticanisti reporters in Rome after the suit was filed. “I didn’t know that I would find cardinals putting money in their pocket, but I found it. And I told [the pope].”

The Vatican’s Dirty Money Problem

Milone was pushed out in 2017 by Cardinal Angelo Becciu, the Vatican’s former secretary of state, who Francis fired in 2021 after he was embroiled in a scandal of his own, accused of funneling $800,000 of the pope’s charity money for nefarious purposes, including allegedly buying false testimony against Australian Cardinal George Pell, who was convicted and acquitted of sex crimes. Pell was the Vatican’s no. 3 who ran the business affairs of the city state until his departure to fight sex charges back home.

The appointment of Milone, under Pell’s recommendation, came at a time when the Vatican Bank was under so much scrutiny the European Central Bank prohibited the use of credit cards in Vatican City because the bank didn’t qualify for basic norms to protect the transactions.

Milone’s suit, which he filed with his assistant auditor Ferruccio Panicco, claims the Holy See is a “viper’s nest” of “financial malfeasance, papal hypocrisy about transparency and a reign of terror by bug- and-blackmail-prone gendarmes,” according to The New York Times, whose correspondent was also privy to a meeting with Milone’s lawyers in Rome.

Milone also uses the complaint to allege the Vatican fired him to keep secrets covered, including inappropriate use of charity funds and a healthy dose of dipping into collection money for personal gain. He also claims that a number of departments within the Roman Curia kept gold bricks and coins, but refused to give him access during the audit ordered by the pope.

The former auditor also claims that one cardinal kept around $250,000 in donations in a plastic shopping bag in his Vatican office. The same cardinal, Milone’s lawyer told reporters, “accidentally” deposited a quarter of a million dollars into his personal account rather than the charity account for which it was destined.

Milone also accuses Becciu and others of planting fake evidence that led to his ouster. “They wanted to threaten me,” he alleged. The Vatican press office did not provide comment on the lawsuit, but confirmed that Milone is under investigation for embezzlement.

No court date has been set in the case, which falls under the jurisdiction of the Vatican’s secret judiciary.

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