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09.12.2017 International

Council Of Europe Committee Urges Vatican To Fight Money Laundering

By GNA
Council Of Europe Committee Urges Vatican To Fight Money Laundering
09.12.2017 LISTEN

Accra, Dec.08 - (dpa/GNA) - The Vatican has made progress in combating money laundering but needs to make more efforts to bring prosecutions, a Council of Europe committee said on Friday.

Moneyval, the council's committee on money laundering and the financing of terrorism, said that the Vatican's Financial Information Authority, set up in 2010, seemed to be working efficiently as both a financial intelligence unit and the supervisor of the Vatican Bank.

The Vatican had established a reporting system in the last two years and its authorities were exchanging information with those in other countries, Moneyval said.

But, it noted, while Vatican authorities had frozen considerable amounts of money, no criminal cases had resulted in a confiscation order and no prosecutions had been brought for money laundering.

The overall effectiveness of the Vatican's actions against money laundering "depends on the results that are achieved by the prosecution and the courts," Moneyval said.

The Vatican has, in recent years, been trying to improve its record on financial transparency after decades in which its bank, the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), was suspected of sheltering the funds of Italian mobsters, money launderers and tax cheats.

GNA

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