The attorney, Roberto Lipari, urged the tribunal to find defendants guilty in the financial-misconduct case, and said they should be required to pay the IOR for “moral and reputational damage.”
Lipari charged that the Secretariat of State used the IOR “like a cash machine,” and used their ecclesiastical clout to force the bank’s cooperation. He emphasized that the investment strategy of the Secretariat of State was amateurish: “It was all managed in a self-referential way by a monsignor who’s an expert in canon law, and an accountant with no experience in financial investments.”
To illustrate his argument, Lipari pointed to a plan to invest in a project in Angola, noting that the project threatened environmental damage, the host country had a poor human-rights record, and a potential partner was an arms dealer.
That project—which was pursued under the leadership of the trial’s chief defendant, Cardinal Angelo Becciu—never came to fruition.