VATICAN CITY
Montreal Gazette
Associated Press
VATICAN CITY – The Vatican’s financial watchdog says it received 544 reports of suspicious financial transactions last year, thanks in large part to beefed-up efforts to flag potential tax cheats who are using the Vatican bank to hide money.
In its annual report, the Financial Information Authority said Thursday it passed 17 cases on to Vatican prosecutors for possible investigation, up from seven a year earlier. In December, European evaluators urged prosecutors to actually bring charges in some of those cases since no indictments have been handed down.
Since 2011, 36 out of 900 suspect transactions have been forwarded to prosecutors for possible follow-up.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.