Thursday, September 23, 2010
http://www.providingnews.com/vatican-bank-under-money-laundering-investigation.html
The Vatican Bank is investigated in a case involving money laundering.
As if the child abuse accusations weren’t enough, now the Vatican Bank is under investigation, in a situation that could cast some bad light over the Holy See.
Even if there are people saying this is just another way of discrediting the Catholic Church, it must be said that two top officials of the bank are under investigation, as they did not comply with laws about money laundering.
They have refused to disclose identities of clients, and this is illegal according to Italian law.
The officials under investigation are Ettore Gotti-Tedeschi, chairman of the Vatican bank, and Paolo Cipriani, IOR’s director general. IOR is the official name of the Vatican Bank (it stands for “Istituto per le Opere di Religione”).
The investigation is about the transfer of 23 million euros from the IOR’s account at Credito Artigiano – 20 million to a JP Morgan Chase brach in Frankfurt and 3 million to a small banking institution in Italy.
Credito Artigiano reported the transfer for “irregularities” to the anti-money-laundering unit of the Bank of Italy. Among these was the fact that the full data of the account holders were not specified. Neither were the reasons of the transfers.