VATICAN CITY
Reuters
VATICAN CITY, May 12 (Reuters) – A drive to tighten financial governance at the Vatican bank after years of alleged wrongdoing has made it “impossible to launder money” there, its chairman said on Thursday.
The bank, which is called the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR), has toughened its rules and closed thousands of accounts since 2012 to break from the murky management of the past.
The IOR’s mission is to manage money for the Roman Catholic Church. But for decades it let Italian citizens hold accounts, which law enforcement officials said helped them launder money and evade taxes.
It holds 5.8 billion euros ($6.6 billion) in assets for clients around the world – primarily congregations, dioceses and other Catholic institutions.
Chairman Jean-Baptiste de Franssu, who took over in 2014 after Pope Francis was elected with a mandate to make the Vatican administration transparent, said the rules were now “extremely strict”.
“Anyone who would be tempted to use an account in an institution to launder money, the last place he would want to come to is IOR,” Franssu told Vatican Radio.
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