VATICAN CITY
Bloomberg Businessweek
By Flavia Rotondi and Chiara Vasarri on June 28, 2012
The Vatican Bank has increased efforts to comply with international rules to control money laundering and is committed to transparency, Paolo Cipriani, director general of the Institute for the Works of Religion, said today in Rome.
“We have stepped up anti-money laundering controls to protect the reputation of the Holy See, remove the veil and shadow of the past” when the IOR was known as one of the world’s most secretive banks, Cipriani said today at the first- ever briefing with reporters inside the bank in Vatican city. “There are no secret numbered accounts here,” Cipriani said.
The Vatican bank has 33,000 accounts with assets of around 6 billion euros ($7.5 billion), Cipriani said today. The bank’s cash machines allow users to operate in Latin.
Set up in 1942 by Pope Pius XII to manage the Vatican’s finances, the bank, known as the IOR from its Italian initials, is controlled by the pontiff and has recently been at the center of several financial scandals. Cipriani and his former boss, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, were placed under investigation by Italian prosecutors in a probe in 2010 for allegedly omitting data from some wire transfers from an Italian account.
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