Vatican bank sets up money-laundering unit hoping to escape scandal

[David Guyatt]

What fun...

But nothing new I'm afraid. The IOR has been tax evading and laundering mafia money for decades. It is its stock in trade.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec...-authority

Vatican bank sets up money-laundering unit hoping to escape scandal
New rules on transparency come after Italian court froze €23m of Vatican funds in September

John Hooper in Rome
guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 29 December 2010 20.10 GMT


The Vatican bank, whose ATM is behind St Peter's Basicila, is promising new transparency in its dealings. Photograph: Paul Owen

The Vatican today announced new rules to make its financial dealings more transparent and bring it into line with international legislation designed to prevent money-laundering.

The move came after an Italian court in September froze €23m (£19.6m) of the Vatican's money over claims that its bankers were trying to move the cash across international borders without identifying its source, destination or purpose. The head of the Vatican bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, and his deputy are still under investigation on suspicion of money-laundering, although no charges have been brought against the two men, who both deny wrongdoing.

Full details of the new measures are to be released today. But a statement made clear they would include the creation of a new compliance authority and the introduction of legislation to combat money laundering and the financing of terrorism.

The Vatican bank, known as the Institute for the Works of Religion, or IOR, is perhaps the world's most extraordinary financial organisation. Its reputedly state-of-the-art facilities are housed in a 15th century tower next to the pope's palace and its ATM behind St Peter's Basilica is in Latin (a cash withdrawal being "deductio ex pecunia").

In the 1980s the IOR was at the centre of a long-running scandal arising from its involvement in the $1.3bn collapse of Italy's largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano, and the death of the bank's chairman, Roberto Calvi, whose body was found hanging under Blackfriars Bridge in London. The Vatican denied any wrongdoing but paid $250m to Ambrosiano's creditors. More recently, in October, police in Sicily said they had uncovered a money-laundering operation that involved the use of an IOR account opened by a priest with family connections to the Mafia.

The IOR was set up to look after the wealth of Catholic organisations, such as religious orders. Its statutes allow lay individuals to open accounts, but only if the purpose is to promote "works of religion or charity".

The new rules appeared designed to comply with a mutually agreed deadline of 31 December for the implementation of the EU's money-laundering directive. The Vatican had also undertaken to set up a financial watchdog body by the first day of 2011.

The Holy See's lawyers have twice tried, without success, to get the Italian courts to free the assets seized three months ago. The Vatican, which appointed Gotti Tedeschi to impose greater transparency on the IOR and ensure it complied with international anti-money laundering regulations, has insisted the affair is the result of a misunderstanding and that it was merely trying to move its own cash around. But earlier this month an Italian judge criticised the Vatican bank for continuing to hide the identity of its clients.

[Peter Lemkin]

What fun...

But nothing new I'm afraid. The IOR has been tax evading and laundering mafia money for decades. It is its stock in trade.

You have to admit David, those Mafiosi are good Catholics....and that is what matters! Morality....forget it....! Profits.....hey, now now that is more like it...along with lots of nubile/defenseless young boys molested in confessionals and other places..... The Vatican....a 2 Millennium scam on so many levels. My favorites are when there were two Popes and both led armies to slaughter and had lovers.....ah, those were the days! Now, they satisfy themselves with young boys and large amounts of illicit cash......oh, and their not too long ago help-a-Nazi past.

[David Guyatt]

To murder a Godfather film phrase:

Good banking practice sleeps with the fishes....

[Peter Lemkin]

To murder a Godfather film phrase:

Good banking practice sleeps with the fishes....

Better yet...how'z this for a 'safe house'

[David Guyatt]

"The doors of all bank vaults open to the right".

So said Vatican insider and P2 "puppet master" Licio Gelli.

How right he was too. As far right as you can go, in fact. During WWII, Gelli was a member of Mussolini's fascist "black shirts" and acted as a liaison to the SS Hermann Goering Division.

And that, I suppose, is where this little trip down memory lane comes full circle"

According to the Wiki article on the Vatican Bank (the IOR):

The Istituto per le Opere di Religione was founded on 27 June 1942 by Pope Pius XII

[Peter Lemkin]

"The doors of all bank vaults open to the right".

So said Vatican insider and P2 "puppet master" Licio Gelli.

How right he was too. As far right as you can go, in fact. During WWII, Gelli was a member of Mussolini's fascist "black shirts" and acted as a liaison to the SS Hermann Goering Division.

And that, I suppose, is where this little trip down memory lane comes full circle"

According to the Wiki article on the Vatican Bank (the IOR):

Where did they stash their stash before they created that opening-to-the-right organization?!?! I just love the name! Shows they weren't trying to hide anything. :angeldevil:

[Peter Lemkin]

Vatican Bank Allowed Clergy to Act as Front for Mafia'
30th December 2010

By Victor Simpson
Independent | December 13, 2010

The Vatican Bank is under new scrutiny in a case involving money-laundering allegations that led police to seize €23m (£19.25m) in September.

The Vatican calls the seizure of assets a "misunderstanding" and expresses optimism it will be quickly cleared up. But fresh court documents show that prosecutors say the Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws "with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital". The documents also reveal investigators' suspicions that clergy may have acted as fronts for corrupt businessmen and Mafia.

The documents pinpoint two transactions that have not been reported: one in 2009 involving the use of a false name, and another in 2010 in which the Vatican Bank withdrew €650,000 from an Italian bank account but ignored bank requests to disclose where the money was headed.

The new allegations of financial impropriety could not come at a worse time for the Vatican, already hit by revelations that it sheltered paedophile priests. The corruption probe has given new hope to Holocaust survivors who tried unsuccessfully to sue in the United States, alleging that Nazi loot was stored in the Vatican Bank.

Yet the scandal is hardly the first for the bank, already distinguished from other banks by the fact that its cash machines are in Latin and priests use a private entrance.

In 1986, a Vatican financial adviser died after drinking cyanide-laced coffee in prison. Another, Roberto Calvi, was found dangling from a rope under London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982, his pockets stuffed with money and stones. The incidents blackened the bank's reputation, raised suspicions of ties with the Mafia, and cost the Vatican hundreds of millions of dollars in legal clashes with Italian authorities.

On 21 September, financial police seized assets from a Vatican Bank account. Investigators said the Vatican had failed to furnish information on the origin or destination of the funds as required by Italian law.

The bulk of the money, €20 million, was destined for the American JP Morgan bank branch in Frankfurt, Germany, with the remainder going to Banca del Fucino, an Italian bank.

Prosecutors alleged the Vatican ignored regulations that foreign banks must communicate to Italian financial authorities where their money has come from. All banks have declined to comment.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/...58692.html

[Magda Hassan]

Four Priests Charged In Vatican Banking Scandal

Rob Wile | Feb. 9, 2012

Italian investigators have charged four priests with laundering money out of the Vatican's official bank, the Institute for the Works of Religion, the National Catholic Reporter's John L. Allen Jr. writes.The Italian daily l'Unita was the first to report that the priests were being investigated for laundering hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It's the latest in a series of investigations into Vatican finances dating back to 2010. In December of that year, Pope Benedict XVI decreed an updated anti-money laundering law for Vatican finances.
Late last month, an Italian TV program published letters written by the Vatican's ambassador to the U.S. that charged the Holy See's financial planners with cronyism and corruption.
In the letters, published by the popular Italian news magazine program "The Untouchables," Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò said that his appointment to the U.S. was motivated by a desire to get him out of Rome because he was causing headaches, according to Les Echoes' Guillaume Delacroix.
Viganò worried that his removal would cause disillusion among those hoping to clean up "corruption and dishonesty" in the city-state, including rigged contract bids and mismanaged investments, Allen reports.
The Vatican has denied the charges.





Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/vatican-b...z1m8fErIrC