Not unexpectedly, the Anglophone news agencies have hastened to report today on the statement yesterday by Italian authorities prosecuting a case of alleged violation of banking rules by the Vatican bank IOR. Fr. Lombardi responded with a statement yesterday [which I translated and posted in the BULLETIN BOARD on the BENEDICT thread, but the report from the prosecutors was available only in Italian and I had no time to translate it:
Prosecutors question Vatican
commitment to banking rules
ROME, Oct. 23 (AP) - Italian prosecutors contest claims by the Vatican bank that it is trying to comply with international rules to fight money laundering, saying an investigation that led to the seizure of €23 million (£20m) from a Vatican bank account shows "exactly the opposite", according to a court document.
An Italian court rejected a Vatican request to lift the seizure, leading the Vatican to express "astonishment" at the court's ruling and indicating the case will not be cleared up quickly, as the Vatican originally predicted.
Since the money was ordered seized last month, the Vatican and the bank's chairman, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, repeatedly said the allegations resulted from a "misunderstanding" and that the Vatican bank - officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion - was working to comply with international rules to fight money-laundering.
The strongly worded document from the prosecutors' office said that while there is a "generic and stated will" to conform by the bank "there is no sign that the institutions of the Catholic church are moving in that direction".
It said the prosecutor's investigation had found "exactly the opposite".
The document was submitted to the court as part of the prosecutors' case against the bank.
The Vatican spokesman, the Rev. Federico Lombardi, issued a new statement, saying Vatican bank officials "confirm their intent to follow the line of transparency" in all financial transactions and are confident in being able to provide as soon as possible all clarifications requested.
Under the investigation, financial police seized the money September 21 from a Vatican bank account at the Rome branch of Credito Artigiano Spa, after the bank informed the Bank of Italy about possible violations of anti-money laundering norms.
The bulk of the money, 20 million euro, was destined for JP Morgan in Frankfurt, with the remainder going to Banca del Fucino.
The prosecutors' document suggests confirmation of Italian press reports that the probe was widening, looking into possible violations in earlier years linked to Italian corruption, in addition to the two most recent cases.
The document cites suspicious transactions involving cheques drawn from a Vatican bank account at Unicredit bank in 2009, involving the use of a false name.
The prosecutors also cited a 650,000 euro withdrawal from a Vatican bank account at Intesa San Paolo bank where the Vatican did not specify the money's ultimate destination despite a specific request by the Italian bank.
The prosecutors called this "a deliberate failure to observe the anti-laundering laws with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital". The Italian banks declined comment.
The Vatican bank is required to provide such information because it is considered by Italy to be a foreign bank.
Not surprisingly, the Anglophone news agencies took no notice of Gianluigi Nuzzi's commentary and background on this current IOR imbroglio which appeared in a major Italian newspaper yesterday. Nuzzi claims the situation is the result of machinations by former officials of IOR from the Wojtyla years who were dismissed during BenedicT XVI's overhaul of the IOR last year, and says that both Benedict XVI and Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the veteran banker he chose to head the IOR, are above blame in this case.
Last year, on the other hand, Nuzzi's book Vaticano s.p.a., detailing mismanagement and questionable business at IOR since the scandal years of the 1980s to just before the overhaul by Benedict XVI was widely quoted and commented on in the Anglophone media.
A later development:
IOR president says Church under attack
in bank probe as in the sex abuse cases
By Lorenzo Totaro
Oct. 23, 2010
An Italian probe into the Vatican Bank for alleged violations of money-laundering laws is another example of a “fierce attack” on the Catholic Church following criticism of Pope Benedict XVI and scrutiny of clerical sex- abuse cases, the bank’s Chairman Ettore Gotti Tedeschi said.
“The fierce attack on the Church’s credibility started just six months after the publication” of Benedict’s encyclical
Caritas in Veritate (Charity in Truth) in July 2009, he said today at a conference in Fermo, central Italy. “First, it was the attack on the pope, then the pedophilia-related facts, and now it carries on with the case that involves me.”
Gotti Tedeschi’s remarks, previously reported by Italian news agency Ansa, were confirmed by Milko Vitali, moderator of the conference. Gotti Tedeschi declined to comment further on his remarks, Vitali said by phone.
The Vatican Bank and its top executives, Gotti Tedeschi and Director General Paolo Cipriani, were put under investigation by Rome prosecutors last month for allegedly omitting data in wire- transfer requests from an Italian bank.
Prosecutors froze 23 million euros ($32 million) in an account registered to the Institute for Religious Works, or the IOR as the Vatican Bank is called, at a Rome branch of Credito Artigiano SpA.
The IOR “took note” of a decision this week by a court in Rome to uphold the seizure of the funds, and reiterated that it’s committed to financial transparency, Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said in a statement late yesterday. Lombardi declined to comment by phone on Gotti Tedeschi’s remarks today.
Three other IOR transactions are under scrutiny for alleged violations of money-laundering laws,
Corriere della Sera said on Oct. 21, citing court documents. In one case, a priest allegedly moved 300,000 euros from an account in San Marino and transferred it to a businessman,
Corriere reported.
The Church has been rocked this year by allegations of clerical sexual abuse of minors in countries including Ireland and Germany, the Pope’s homeland. Benedict, who has repeatedly apologized for the abuse, has been criticized for his handling of such cases as archbishop of Munich from 1977 to 1981. [Look, even Bloomberg News, a financial news service, now carries this 'standard rider' on Vatican-related stories!]
Six months after his encyclical came out, Benedict visited Rome’s Great Synagogue last January amid Jewish concerns over his move to put wartime Pope Pius II on the path to sainthood. Critics say Pius did too little to stop the Holocaust, a charge the Vatican rejects.
[I really think the release of CIV had little to do with the eruption of the media battles against the Church. The resurgence of the pedophilia issue came after the disclosure of priest abuses in past decades at a Jesuit school in Germany in January. The Pope visited the Synagogue two weeks earlier - and the polemics over Pius XII were a continuation of the rekindling of this issue when Benedict XVI proclaimed his predecessor's heroic virtues on Dec. 19, 2009.... The timing of the first report on an investigation into IOR did come the day after the Pope's triumphant visit to the UK, so one might have reason to suspect some malice in the timing. But otherwise, one must question the rightness of linking the attacks on the Church to CIV!]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 23/10/2010 22:56]