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The Vatican Bank has unearthed more than 100 suspicious payments this year after starting full-scale checks on its customers for the first time to crack down on money laundering, up from six last year, said an official knowledgeable about the cleanup effort.
The Los Angeles Times quoted a bank official who requested anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the inquiry publicly.
On Monday, the Vatican reported that it had been given a positive progress report by Moneyval, the Council of Europe money-laundering monitor, after a middling grade in a full evaluation last year.
The new report, which was signed off Monday and will be formally released by Moneyval on Thursday, gives an assessment but no grades.
Rene Bruelhart, the Swiss banking expert serving as director of the bank’s new oversight body, acknowledged last week that “there has been a very significant jump in suspicious transaction reports in 2013.”
Bruelhart was appointed last year as part of a drive by former Pope Benedict XVI and his successor, Pope Francis, to reform the scandal-dogged institution.
“Understanding where the vulnerabilities are is of key importance and takes time, but that is what we have done, with the aim of building an early-warning system,” he said.
Set up in 1942 to support religious works and now holding $7 billion in assets, the Institute for Religious Works has been no stranger to scandal since a former governor, American Archbishop Paul C. Marcinkus, was indicted in 1982 after the bank was implicated in the collapse of Italy’s Banco Ambrosiano, in which it was a stakeholder.
Sources
Los Angeles Times
Newser
Image: NCR Online
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