A
dedicated group of around 15 experts from the company have moved into
the bank’s headquarters, a medieval tower within the tiny sovereign
state. Photo: APBy Nick Squires, Rome, The Telegraph, UK – July 21, 2013
http://tinyurl.com/mnhgdba
Investigators are systematically combing through the 19,000 accounts held by the Vatican’s bank in search of money laundering and other crimes, in a long-delayed attempt to clean up the reputation of the tarnished institution.
The campaign to bring more transparency and accountability to the bank started under Benedict XVI, but has dramatically picked up momentum under Pope Francis since his election in March.
The forensic review is being orchestrated by Ernst von Freyberg, a German banker, lawyer and member of the Knights of Malta chivalric order, who was appointed president of the bank earlier this year.
He has brought in forensic accounting experts from Promontory Financial Group, a risk management and regulatory compliance consulting firm which works in 50 countries.
A dedicated group of around 15 experts from the company have moved into the bank’s headquarters, a medieval tower within the tiny sovereign state.
They are conducting detailed background checks on its 19,000 account holders, from priests, nuns and employees of the Vatican City State, to religious orders, Catholic charities and dioceses.
They are analysing around 1,500 accounts a month and since starting work in May have sifted through around a fifth of the bank’s clients.They scrutinise the client’s identity, check whether there are any other signatories on the account, and hunt for any suspicious financial activities.
“We have made enormous progress over the last 12 weeks in opening up to the world,” Mr Von Freyberg told The Daily Telegraph from his office inside the bank.
“Our work is to make the bank transparent. The second important element is to clean up our accounts.
“Promontory is cnducting a full forensic review. 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.”
The multi-national team of specialists is drawing up an anti-money laundering rule book for the bank’s 112 employees, hauling its financial regulations into the 21st century and making sure relations with other banks are above board.
“They are working more or less 24 hours a day,” said Max Hohenberg, a German public relations consultant who has been appointed the bank’s spokesman as part of its push for greater openness.
The bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion, has struggled to clean up its image ever since Roberto Calvi, dubbed “God’s banker”, was found hanging beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London in 1982 – the victim of a suspected Mafia killing.
Calvi was the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, an Italian bank which collapsed with massive losses. The Vatican was the main shareholder in the bank.
The exact circumstances of his death have never been resolved but there are strong suspicions that he was punished by mobsters for losing money that they had entrusted to him.
It is claimed that a priest appointed to a key role in the Vatican bank had a string of homosexual affairs that forced his recall from an overseas posting.
Pope Francis recently appointed Msgr Battista Ricca as his “eyes and ears” within the bank after launching reforms aimed at cracking down on reported money laundering, tax evasion and other financial abuses.
However, it has been claimed that Msgr Ricca, 57, who had a 15-year career as a Vatican diplomat, allegedly shocked fellow priests and nuns at the Holy See’s embassy in Montevideo, Uruguay, by having a homosexual affair with a captain in the Swiss army.
The expose of the alleged indiscretions, which happened in 1999 and 2000, was published by L’Espresso, a weekly news magazine, which said they had been confirmed by “numerous bishops, priests, religious and laity” in Uruguay.
Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the reports about the monsignor were “not tenable”.
