Italy court definitively annuls warrant for Vatican suspect

By NICOLE WINFIELD
Associated Press

ROME (AP) — 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. That’s according to Gianluigi Torzi’s legal team. The decision by Rome’s Tribunal of Review ends extradition procedures against him in Britain and is a blow to Italian prosecutors but also to Vatican prosecutors. The Vatican had been trying to bring Torzi back to Italy to stand trial for his role in the Holy See’s costly London real estate deal. The Vatican doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Britain, but its prosecutors gave evidence to their Italian counterparts, who launched their own investigation into Torzi’s finances and sought his arrest on other charges.