Crackdown on the 'bank of popes'
Pope Francis has moved quickly to reform the scandal-ridden Vatican bank. The Swiss Guard and ATMs that give instructions in Latin, however, will remain unchanged.
Pope Francis blesses the faithful during the weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square, at the Vatican, Wednesday, Oct. 9, 2013.
Gregorio Borgia/AP
Tucked away on an upper floor, a team of forensic accounting experts from Promontory Financial Group, a US-based regulatory compliance consulting firm, is systematically screening the 19,000 accounts held by the bank.
With 7,000 accounts now checked, around 900 individuals and institutions have been told to close their accounts and move their money elsewhere after investigators ruled that they did not conform to the new, more stringent rules on depositors. They were not necessarily guilty of money laundering, fraud, or other financial crimes, says Max Hohenberg, the bank’s spokesman.
“They may have committed zero legal wrongdoing but for statutory reasons have been excluded,” Mr. Hohenberg says.
Mr. Von Freyberg took up his post in February after his predecessor, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was abruptly dismissed last year after being accused of neglecting basic management responsibilities at the bank, which holds more than 7 billion euros in assets.
Von Freyberg says he and his team have made “enormous progress” but that there remains work to be done in making the bank more transparent.
“We need to become compliant with international financial laws, including on money laundering. The Pope strongly endorses a Vatican bank that serves the Church and no one else,” he says.
'God's banker'
The bank has had a tarnished image ever since Roberto Calvi, dubbed “God’s banker,” was found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982.Nobody has ever been found guilty of his murder, but there has been intense speculation that he had lost money entrusted to him by the Italian Mafia and that he paid with his life.
Mr. Calvi was the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, an Italian bank that collapsed with massive losses. The Vatican was its main shareholder.
It was the darkest chapter of the bank’s history but by no means its only scandal.
Earlier this year the director general and his deputy were placed under investigation for money laundering and forced to resign.
It has come under intense scrutiny by Moneyval, the Council of Europe's anti-money-laundering committee, which said last year that while the Holy See had taken steps to improve standards, more needed to be done. Moneyval is due to conduct a new assessment later this year.
Just as the reform efforts were getting under way this summer, another scandal emerged.
A senior prelate working as an accountant in a related Vatican finance department was arrested in June and accused of trying to smuggle 20 million euros in cash from Switzerland to Italy aboard a private plane.
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Europe/2013/1011/Crackdown-on-the-bank-of-popes?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_term=Weekend_Best_of_Web&utm_campaign=20131012_Newsletter%3AWeekly_Sailthru&cmpid=ema%3Anws%3AWeekly%2520Newsletter%2520%2810-12-2013%29
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