The former head of the Vatican’s financial intelligence agency was acquitted of corruption and bribery charges by a Swiss court Wednesday.
René Brülhart, 52, former president of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority (formerly AIF, now ASIF), had been charged with violating banking secrecy laws and allegedly bribing and obtaining classified information from a member of the Austrian Secret Service and multiple politicians between 2013 and 2016.
Prosecutors asked that Brülhart be sentenced to five years in prison for his actions. They alleged that Brülhart had established a “secrets for money” network and that corruption was his “business model.”
Brülhart’s defense attorneys argued that the demand for five years in prison was not proportional to his alleged actions and the prosecution’s case was based on “wild speculation and assertions”.
The defense argued that there was no trace of any secret payments. The court ruled that there was not substantial evidence of the corruption and bribery charges and the breach of banking secrecy had expired due to the statute of limitations, thereby acquitting Brülhart of all charges.
The ruling comes after Brülhart had previously faced abuse of office and breach of confidentiality charges in the Vatican itself.
In December 2023, at the conclusion of the long-running Vatican finance trial, Brülhart was cleared of the most serious charges, but convicted of failure to report a serious transaction to the promoter of justice and issued a fine of 1,750 euros ($1,900).
The Swiss lawyer made his career as an engine of financial reform, overseeing the financial intelligence agency of Liechtenstein until 2012, when he was appointed director of the Vatican’s AIF by Pope Benedict XVI. In 2014, Pope Francis named him the agency’s new president, and he continued in that capacity for five years.
Brülhart stepped down from the AIF at the end of 2019, shortly after Vatican law enforcement conducted raids on the agency’s offices as part of their investigation into the financial scandal at the Holy See’s Secretariat of State.
Prosecutors conducted a two-year investigation into Vatican finances after receiving a complaint from the leadership of the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), a Vatican bank overseen by Brülhart’s AIF. The complaint concerned a request for a 150 million euro (roughly $170,00,000) loan from the Secretariat of State.
Gianfranco Mammì, the IOR director general, complained to Vatican financial watchdogs about the “opacity” of a formal request for a 150 million euro loan from the Secretariat of State intended to refinance a mortgage on the London building which the secretariat acquired as part of its purchase of the building from its former investment manager, Raffaele Mincione.
At the time of the complaint, the IOR was the sole Vatican financial institution under the AIF’s authority.
In a 488-page indictment against the 10 accused, Vatican prosecutors argued that the AIF, under Brülhart’s leadership, “overlooked the anomalies of the London transaction – of which it had immediately been informed – especially considering the wealth of information acquired as a result of intelligence activity.”
One senior Vatican source told The Pillar that Brülhart was paid at least 300,000 euros annually for his work as president of the AIF, a role which only required him to work the equivalent of two days per week, the source said.
The same source told The Pillar that Brülhart was separately contracted for a similar amount by the Secretariat of State to act as an “advisor” on the department’s investments.
Sources at the Secretariat for the Economy and the Secretariat of State told The Pillar in July 2021 that the consultancy payments were arranged by Cardinal Angelo Becciu, who served as sostituto at the Secretariat of State from 2011-2018 and was found guilty of financial crimes in December 2023.
A senior source close to the Secretariat for the Economy told The Pillar that payments from the Secretariat of State to Brülhart were not made known to the Vatican’s economic secretariat, which was charged by Pope Francis with reforming Vatican accounting and administrative procedures.
However, while confirming the arrangement, Brülhart’s legal team told The Pillar that suggestions his client’s ties to the Secretariat of State were kept off-books is “without foundation and shocking,” and denied the consulting arrangement was handled through Becciu.
“In fact, the contractual relationship between Brülhart and the Secretariat of State was regulated by a formal contract signed by His Most Reverend Eminence Cardinal Pietro Parolin,” the lawyer said.
The Vatican financial trial concluded in December 2023. Appeals remain underway.