Vatican Bank Being Investigated For Money Laundering

From Newsmax comes a report that the head of the Vatican bank is being investigated for money-laundering. This is not the first time the the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), as it’s called, has come under suspicion for less than good deeds. It  was also involved in the Banco Ambrosiano scandal in 1982, a scandal that’s even found its way into pop culture (for eg. in The Da Vinci Code and in a recent TV drama).

“The head of the Vatican bank is under investigation for suspected money laundering and police have frozen 23 million euros ($30.21 million) of its funds, Italian judicial sources said on Tuesday. Neither Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who has been at the helm of the bank for a year, nor the Vatican spokesman would comment immediately on the case, which involves alleged violations of European Union money laundering regulations.

The sources said Gotti Tedeschi and another executive of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), as the bank is officially known, had been put under investigation by Rome magistrates Nello Rossi and Stefano Fava.

The sources said Italy’s financial police had preventively frozen 23 million euros of the IOR’s funds in an account in an Italian bank in Rome.

Two recent transfers from an IOR account in the Italian bank were deemed suspicious by financial police and blocked.

One was a transfer of 20 million euros to a German branch of a U.S. bank and another of 3 million euros to an Italian bank.

Gotti Tedeschi, a devout Catholic who has taught financial ethics at the Catholic University of Milan, is a close adviser to Treasury Minister Giulio Tremonti.

He is currently also head of an Italian unit of the Spanish Banco Santander , according to its website, and serves on the board of several major Italian banks.”

Read the rest of this piece at Newsmax.com.

More details at Associated Press.

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