VATICAN CITY
Independent Catholic News (United Kingdom)

The new Director of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority (AIF), Rene Bruelhart, has spoken about moves by the Bank of Italy to block electronic cash and payment machines.

In an interview published by the Italian daily Corriere della sera and translated by the Vatican press office Mr Bruelhart said: “I’m surprised by the measures taken by the Bank of Italy blocking all the credit card services of Deutsche Bank in the Vatican.

“In July, the Holy See passed the third round evaluation of the Moneyval Committee of the Council of Europe with a ‘good’ report card, passing 9 of 16 ‘core and key’ recommendations. So the Vatican was not subject to any special measures for monitoring money laundering, neither by Moneyval nor by any other international body.

“We don’t have problems with other European countries. On the contrary, we have close collaboration….