A Hungarian court has ordered the Institute for Works of Religion, the Vatican’s bank, to pay more than €20 million in damages to a Malta-based investment fund over the stalled sale of the historic Budapest Stock Exchange palace. The order came after the bank failed to lodge a written defence within the legal deadline.

The bank, widely known as the IOR and Futura Investment Management have been fighting for years over the multi-million-euro property deal. Futura accuses the bank of failing to honour significant capital commitments and of later legal actions that it says interfered with the management and disposal of the property, causing substantial financial losses to the fund and its investors.

Futura says the bank walked away from its legal commitment to fund the project after a change of leadership at the IOR. The fund said the Hungarian decision reinforces its efforts to safeguard its assets and protect the interests of its investors.

The bank played down the ruling. It said the measure is not a judgment but an order issued in default. “Accordingly, the court has neither examined the merits of the dispute, nor assessed whether the opposing party’s claims were well founded, nor established any liability on the part of the IOR,” the bank said. It added that it has appealed the order so the proceedings can continue and the dispute can be examined on its merits.

In March, the fund held on to a €29.5 million precautionary asset freeze against the IOR after a Maltese court rejected on technical grounds the bank’s attempt to lift it. The freeze dates to 2021, when Futura sought to freeze any assets the bank held in Malta pending a separate damages lawsuit over lost profits and opportunities from the stalled deal. When no assets were found in Malta, Futura obtained a European account preservation order, which lets a court in one EU country freeze a debtor’s funds held in another.