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Vatican bank chief under investigation for money laundering
Head of the Vatican Bank Ettore Gotti Tedeschi is under investigation for money laundering, launched after two suspicious transactions were reported to tax police in Rome.
Prosecutors have seized €23 million from the bank’s accounts with a small Italian bank called Credito Artigianato.
Investigators are looking into the claims that Tedeschi and another senior official violated laws that require banks to disclose information on financial operations.
The Vatican said it was "perplexed and astonished", and expressed full confidence in Tedeschi.
In a statement, the Vatican said it had been working for some time to make its finances more transparent to comply with anti-terrorism and anti-money laundering regulations.
The Vatican Bank, known officially as the Institute for Religious Works, was created during World War II to administer accounts held by religious orders, cardinals, bishops and priests.
The last scandal it was involved in dates back to 1982, when governor Archbishop Paul Marcinkus was involved in the collapse of what was then Italy's largest private bank, Banco Ambrosiano.
Although he was never arrested, the subsequent fallout from that scandal took a sinister turn when two top executives, one of them the bank’s chairman, Roberto Calvi, were found murdered.
Calvi, known as God's Banker because of his close ties to the Vatican, was found hanged under Blackfriars Bridge in London.
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Perhaps Matthew can put back my comments on the Vatican Bank which he removed last week.
Sorry Matthew I was a week ahead of the this story.
Surely whoever put pressure on you to remove those comments will now try to bury this story too.
Prove you're a journalist who seeks the truth and not someone's lackey to hide it.
