VATICAN CITY
Vatican Information Service
Vatican City, 19 May 2014 (VIS) – The Autorità di Informazione Finanziaria (AIF) – Financial Intelligence Authority – of the Holy See and the Vatican City State has presented its Annual Report for 2013. The report reviews the activities and statistics of AIF for the year 2013.
The year 2013 has seen a significant strengthening of the legal and institutional framework of the Holy See and Vatican City State to effectively combat financial crime, an institutionalisation of international collaboration of the competent authority of the Holy See with its foreign counterparts, and a massively improved performance in monitoring potential financial wrongdoing.
“In 2013 we have taken further decisive steps to foster the legal framework, and, at the same time, to make it work in practice,” said Rene Brulhart, Director of the AIF. He continued: “The Evaluation conducted by Moneyval, the Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism of the Council of Europe, in December 2013, and our statistics allow us to say that today we have a proper and equivalent system in place to prevent and fight financial crime. A system that is well in line with international standards”.
The AIF has recorded a notable uptake in suspicious transaction reports (STR), from 6 in 2012 to 202 in 2013. This increase reflects both the development of the legal framework and a substantial improvement in the operational performance of the supervised entities with regard to the prevention of financial crime. Five reports have been passed on to the Vatican Promoter of Justice for further investigation by judicial authorities.
The number of requests from AIF submitted to foreign authorities has increased from 1 in 2012 to 28; the number of requests received by the AIF from foreign authorities has risen from 3 in 2012 to 53 in 2013. “This increase is also due to international cooperation fostered by a series of bilateral agreements we have concluded,” said Brulhart. In 2013, AIF became a member of the Egmont Group, the global network of Financial Intelligence Units, and signed various bilateral agreements to institutionalize mutual collaboration in the area of anti-money laundering and combating financing of terrorism. Memoranda of Understanding have been signed with Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia and the United States.
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