Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1547510
7 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 8 NOVEMBER 2026 NEWS faces €21.5 million bill in Budapest The money veers off course Cougar was owned by a Dubai firm tied to the wealthy Cam- ponovo family, later joined by a company registered in Panama. Futura's own minutes muddy the question of who wanted all this. On 6 March 2013, they re- cord that the Vatican investor "had a strong preference" for Kappa to take over the palace only "once (and if)" the swap succeeded. Matta called the Cougar route the most practi- cal option, "though a potentially expensive one". Expensive it proved. The mon- ey took four steps. First, Kappa lent Cougar €20 million, a loan "completely lack- ing any form of guarantee", the judge said. Second, Cougar spent that money buying the debt from Newton for €20.4 million. Third, a Hungarian court blessed the swap, and Cougar took 90% of the palace compa- ny. Fourth, on 12 November 2013, Kappa bought Cougar outright, agreeing to pay its owners €14 million for their shares. That in- cluded the €2 million they had put in themselves. Kappa lent the money, then bought the borrower. The two sides tot up the dam- age differently. The bank set Kappa's outlay of about €32 million against the €20.4 million Cougar paid for the debt. The €11.6 million gap, it said, had been siphoned from its money, and its lawyers spoke of a "men- acing web of intrigue and suspi- cious transactions". The court put the loss at €12 million: the €14 million paid for Cougar, minus the €2 million its owners had put in. The funds say a formula, pegged to the building's €40 million valuation, set the price fairly, and that Kappa bought in below value. Even so, Stefano Camponovo conceded under cross-examina- tion that the €14 million has still not been paid in full. The sophistry of the middleman The funds insisted Cougar was slotted in to shield the Vatican bank from the taint of traffick- ing in bad debt, and to shoul- der the risk of an untested debt swap – a similar deal had virtu- ally never been done in Hunga- ry. The judge would have none of it. "It makes no sense for some- one who sees buying a debt as an immoral act, capable of tar- nishing one's reputation, to see lending money to buy that debt as an act that takes nothing away from that same reputa- tion," he wrote. Lending money to fund an im- moral act, he added, "is as mor- ally reprehensible as carrying out the immoral act itself". Nor did Cougar draw the dan- ger away from Kappa. "Who- ever works with other people's money takes a far more limited risk," the judge wrote. Cougar's owners, meanwhile, had secured "no less than €14 million… within a few months, by risking the Kappa fund's capital in a project that was not even designed by them". Cougar, the judge concluded, was "the very means" through which the Vatican bank's rights were violated. A new pope, a frozen fund Within months, Francis was pope, and Cipriani and Tulli were gone. The new management's first moves seemed to contradict each other. In late September 2013, it acknowledged in writ- ing that €24 million was still owed. Less than three weeks lat- er, it rebuffed a €10 million cap- ital call, demanding documents first, and then a reduced request for €4 million. Futura pressed on regardless, buying Cougar in November 2013. Futura says that, without the bank's money, the works never began. When the bank asked for its money back in October 2015, Futura froze all withdrawals within days, pleading "liquidity issues". The judge branded the freeze abusive and illegal, done to avoid paying the bank out. Futura claimed the bank was really waging a vendetta against Cipriani and Tulli amid faction- al strife after Benedict's depar- ture. The bank had indeed turned on its old bosses. In 2022, the Vatican's Court of Appeal or- dered Cipriani and Tulli to pay it some €40.5 million for misman- agement, an award that, Friday's judgment notes, includes losses linked to Kappa. Tippin's tip-off In November 2019, a warning arrived from an unlikely quar- ter: Michael Tippin, who still held 10% of the palace. Futura was selling Cougar to compa- nies linked to Hungarian prop- erty group Indotek for €41.7 million, less Cougar's debts. The bank says it had not been told. "We feel obliged to at least confirm that all investors inter- ests are being properly served, with full transparency," Tippin wrote. The bank won an injunction in Malta, a Luxembourg tribu- nal blocked the sale too, and in March 2020 the buyers walked away. Futura struck back, secur- ing a court order freezing €29.5 million of the bank's assets. On Friday, the judge ruled the Indotek sale would have "se- riously prejudiced" the bank. A €56.7 million offer for all of Kappa's shares, from Treville A.S. in March 2020, "seriously undermines" Futura's claim that Indotek's price was a good one, he said. Yet the bank itself spurned Treville, even though it would have recouped all €17 million it had invested. Its own wit- ness admitted it did not want to abandon the Maltese case. The verdict The four companies, Futura Funds SICAV, Futura Invest- ment Management, Optimum Evolution Fund SIF and Opti- mum Asset Management, must pay €24.1 million, plus interest from Friday. That is the €12 million loss and €12.1 million in lost profits, worked out by the bank's ex- pert from Optimum's own 2013 business plan. The bank need not pay the disputed €24 million: a party in breach, the judge reasoned, can- not insist the other side honour its bargain. Claims for reputational dam- age were also thrown out. The claims against Matta and Stabile personally failed. As di- rectors, they owed their duties to the companies, not to the bank. An MFSA letter alleging Matta controlled Cougar's Panamani- an shareholder was "worrying", the judge said, but not proof. Nobody from the MFSA tes- tified, and the allegation was found unproven. The Vatican bank must pay Matta and Stabile's legal costs. Futura's bid for up to €63 million in damages over the blocked sale failed too. A palace sold, a bill from Budapest The palace finally found a buy- er in December 2024: a fund run by Gránit Asset Management, reported to be linked to Viktor Orbán's son-in-law, István Ti- borcz. Futura told the court it fetched €30 million plus a share of fu- ture profits, well short of the €50.4 million floor the owners had set in 2021. On the sellers' side sat Tippin, the man who had tipped off the bank, alongside Futura's general counsel, Andrea Suriano. It was the palace company, 90% owned by Cougar, that then took the bank to court in Buda- pest, over the years the Maltese judge had declined to examine. The court never weighed the claim. The bank missed its deadline, after the Vatican's own post of- fice contradicted its account of when the papers arrived. It lost by default. Budapest's old Stock Exchange Palace