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From: wolda002@umn.edu
Date: Wed Sep 22 2010 - 00:44:01 EDT
Vatican Bank head in money laundering probe: sources
Reuters
September 21, 2010 14:45 GMT By Massimiliano Di Giorgio and Philip Pullella
ROME (Reuters) - The Vatican bank's top two officials are 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.
They said President Ettore Gotti Tedeschi and director-general Paolo
Cipriani were being investigated by Rome magistrates Nello Rossi and
Stefano Fava in a case involving alleged violations of European Union
money-laundering rules.
The Vatican confirmed the Rome magistrates' action in a statement that
expressed "perplexity and amazement" at the move and "utmost faith" in the
two men who head the bank, officially known as Institute for Religious
Works (IOR).
Gotti Tedeschi, 65, has been at the helm of the bank for a year and is a
close adviser to Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti.
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.
A statement from the Vatican's Secretariat of State said the bank had
committed no wrongdoing because it was transferring its own money between
its own accounts.
Gotti Tedeschi, a devout Catholic who has taught financial ethics at the
Catholic University of Milan, also heads an Italian unit of the Spanish
Banco Santander, according to its website.
He also serves on the board of several major Italian banks.
ATM MACHINES IN LATIN
The IOR primarily manages funds for the Vatican and religious institutions
around the world, such as charity organizations and religious orders of
priests and nuns.
Its cash point machines in the Vatican are perhaps the only ones in the
world that allow clients to choose Latin as the language to perform
operations.
The IOR was involved in the fraudulent bankruptcy of Banco Ambrosiano, then
Italy's largest private bank, that turned into an international scandal in
1982. The IOR held a small stake in Ambrosiano, whose president Roberto
Calvi was found hanged under London's Blackfriars Bridge the same year.
Several investigations failed to determine whether Calvi, known as God's
Banker, had been killed or committed suicide.
At the time the IOR was headed by American Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, who
died in Arizona in 2006.
The Vatican denied any responsibility for the collapse of Banco Ambrosiano
but made what it called a "goodwill payment" of $250 million to Ambrosiano
creditors.
(Writing by Philip Pullella, reporting by Massimiliano Di Giorgio, Philip
Pullella and Giusepe Fonte; Editing by Mark Heinrich)