A former auditor general of the Vatican is resurfacing allegations that the city-state used a "skeleton key for money laundering," and he is trying to state his case before Pope Leo XIV, according to reports.
Libero Milone, a former auditor at accounting firm Deloitte, was forced to resign in 2017 amid claims that he was a spy. Milone, instead, insists he was terminated by a former police chief and cardinal, Giovanni Angelo Becciu, because he had uncovered financial wrongdoing, Politico reported. Becciu was convicted of embezzlement in 2023 for misusing Vatican funds.
Milone, who was appointed by Pope Francis in 2015, claims that the payroll agency of the Vatican had found a way to alter names and account numbers on transactions after they were made, disguising the identity of recipients and senders, according to the report.
The Vatican has brushed off the accusation as technically impossible. However, Milone claims he is in possession of documents that can prove the systematic corruption prior to his dismissal in 2017, The Pillar reported.
"I want to speak to the Pope," Milone said on July 30, "but the Pope needs to speak to me, not because I am clever or anything [but] because he is surrounded by people who will never tell him what actually happened. There is a level of self-protection in the Vatican which was there before by a group of people centrally who will never tell the Pope the true story," he said, according to The Pillar.
Milone's claims amount to unlimited money laundering and violations of anti-fraud laws, Politico reported. If proven, "the Vatican would likely end up on an international financial blacklist of the darkest kind, frozen out of the international banking system, meaning no money could come in or out of the city-state except in literal, physical cash," Politico reported.
The Vatican told Politico last week that Milone's allegations are "completely unfounded." A person familiar with the payroll software told Politico that "it is not possible to alter the content of a payment message once it has been sent."
Regardless, Milone is seeking a meeting with the Pope because he believes corruption is still rampant within the curia.
"I'm not trying to blackmail anybody," Milone said, according to The Pillar. "I think the legal process has to be followed through. But I have evidence, and I know what I did, and I'm absolutely sure what we did was correct — and so do 95% of the people in the Vatican, by the way, I'm sure."
Mark Swanson ✉
Mark Swanson, a Newsmax writer and editor, has nearly three decades of experience covering news, culture and politics.