(Bloomberg) -- The Vatican’s allegations of fraud and conspiracy at the heart of a controversial London real estate deal worth hundreds of millions dollars are “incoherent and confused,” lawyers said at the start of a trial that’ll see a senior official from the Roman Catholic Church testify. 

The case is part of the sprawling dispute across several countries over a 2018 deal involving the Vatican’s €350 million ($374 million) investment in a former Harrods warehouse, which was proposed for redevelopment. The Holy See sold the property for a massive loss to Bain Capital in 2022 for £186 million ($235 million).

Former banker Raffaele Mincione sued the Vatican’s secretariat alleging his professional reputation and business suffered after he was accused of being involved in a fraud to inflate the price of a property in London’s Chelsea district. 

Mincione, with others, is accused of fraud and misrepresentation to extract money from the secretariat, lawyers for the Vatican said. 

“At the very lowest, that means that the claimants, in particular Mr. Mincione, were not acting in good faith,” they said.

Scandal

A Vatican investigation led to charges against 10 people, including financial brokers, an Italian cardinal and a lawyer. 

Mincione was convicted over a 2014 investment by the secretariat worth about over $200 million into a fund. He challenged the conviction. He filed the UK claim in 2020 urging the court to declare he acted in good faith

The scandal later pushed Pope Francis to overhaul and centralize the financial investments of its institutions to turn the page on decades of scandals that have tarnished the reputation of the Catholic church. Francis made transparency and accountability priorities for the Vatican’s finances.

“I look forward to these issues being examined by an independent and internationally-respected judicial system,” Mincione said in an emailed statement. He is scheduled to appear as witness in the case.

The allegation of misrepresenting the property’s value is “unsupported and unsustainable,” his lawyers said in the documents.

Lawyers for the Secretariat of the State of the Holy See didn’t immediately respond to an email for comment. Mincione launched the proceeding to bring pressure on the Vatican’s justice office “or somehow ‘manage’ the understandably negative public relations consequences of being accused of having been involved in serious criminal activity,” they said in the filings.

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