Italy court definitively annuls warrant for Vatican suspect
ABC News
An Italian appeals court has definitively annulled the pre-trial arrest warrant for the prime suspect in the Vatican’s big fraud and embezzlement trial
ROME -- An Italian appeals court has definitively annulled the pre-trial arrest warrant for the prime suspect in the Vatican’s big fraud and embezzlement trial, signaling an end to extradition procedures in Britain for now, his legal team said Wednesday.
The decision by Rome’s Tribunal of Review is a blow to Italian prosecutors but also to Vatican prosecutors, who had been trying to bring Gianluigi Torzi back to Italy to eventually stand trial in the Vatican for his role in the Holy See's costly London real estate deal.
The Vatican doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Britain. But the city state’s prosecutors provided evidence to their Italian counterparts who launched their own investigation into Torzi’s finances and sought his arrest on an international warrant to stand trial in Italy on charges including tax evasion and money laundering.
The London-based Torzi denies wrongdoing in both the Italian and Vatican cases, which will nevertheless proceed in his absence.