Libero Milone

Libero Milone is a Netherlands-born Italian businessman who has held high-ranking positions at Deloitte and who was appointed by Pope Francis to be the first auditor-general of the Vatican in 2015 before being forced to resign in 2017.

Professional life

Milone was born in The Hague and was educated in The Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

After starting his career in London, he began a 32-year career with Deloitte and moved to Italy in 1975, where he became a partner in Deloitte's audit department in 1984. He served as Deloitte's Italian human resources leader (1984–1995), then its Europe-wide human resources leader (1991–1995), and finally as its managing director of human resources worldwide, based in New York (1998–2003), and then chairman and CEO of Deloitte in Italy (2003-2007). He was also a member of Deloitte's worldwide management (1998–2003), coordinator of its worldwide aviation interest group (1996-2002), managing director of its worldwide aviation and transport industry group (2002–2007), and member of its worldwide board and governance committee (2003–2007).

From 2008 to 2011, he was a senior advisor and honorary president of Protiviti, a multinational corporate governance and risk management consultancy. He has served as a nonexecutive director of companies including Fiat Industrial s.P.a., the Poltrona Frau Group, Indesit, Tofaş, and Falck Renewables. Cardinal George Pell, then the head of the Vatican's Secretariat for the Economy, stated that Milone would be answerable only to the pope and free to review the finances and management of any department of the Vatican. Statutes gave Milone “full autonomy and independence”, including the authority to “receive and investigate any reports on anomalous activities” of Vatican entities. or 14

The Vatican gendarmerie raided Milone's office on June 18, 2017, and the following day, he was questioned by Vatican police for 12 hours and compelled to resign his position by Archbishop Giovanni Angelo Becciu, then the substitute for general affairs in the Vatican Secretariat of State. The charges against him included misusing funds to hire an external company to check the security of his office's computers, carrying out investigations that violated the statutes of his department, and looking into the affairs of high-ranking churchmen without authorization. Becciu and Domenico Giani, then the head of the Vatican gendarmerie, stated that if Milone had not resigned, he would have been prosecuted.

In 2019, Milone told the Financial Times that he had been ousted from his position after investigating secret bank accounts, including some linked to a controversial 200 million euro London property investment authorized by Becciu. In 2020, Becciu was forced to resign the privileges of the cardinalate due to his involvement in numerous financial scandals.