ROME - An Italian magistrate has ordered the arrest of the broker Gianluigi Torzi on charges of fraudulent billing, money laundering and other financial crimes, for his involvement in the scandal surrounding the Vatican’s purchase of 60 Sloane Avenue in London. Three of Torzi’s business associates are also wanted by Italian police.

  Torzi is resident in London and so has not yet been given any official arrest warrant, and it is yet to be seen if the Italian authorities will seek an international arrest warrant.

  Torzi had brokered the deal for the purchase of the London property on behalf of the Vatican’s Secretariat of State, using Church funds, taking over in 2018 from the Italian businessman Raffaele Mincione, with whom the Vatican had begun the deal.

  It is alleged that Torzi’s actions were part of a conspiracy to defraud the secretariat of millions of euros. As part of the deal, Torzi sold the secretariat the 30,000 majority shares in Gutt SA, the holding company through which the London property was purchased, while he retained the 1,000 shares with voting rights. The Vatican claim the way in which he did this was “secretive and dishonest.”

  Torzi has denied any wrongdoing, though the charges for his arrest also include many other financial crimes not linked to this deal. 

  In 2019 five other Vatican employees also lost their jobs over the deal.

  Torzi had spent 10 days in a Vatican jail last year, charged with two counts of embezzlement, two counts of fraud, extortion and money laundering.

  Last month, Judge Tony Baumgartner of Southwark Crown Court reversed the seizure of Torzi’s accounts that had been requested by Vatican prosecutors, stating that the Vatican’s “non-disclosures and misrepresentations are so appalling that the ultimate sanction” to reverse the seizure of the assets was appropriate.

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