This is not something that has been imbedded in the Vatican in any full blown sense for centuries. It has lurched toward it from time to time over the centuries, but it wasn't until the complete takeover of the Vatican by the Freemasons in the 1958 Conclave through the Vatican II Freemasonic/CIA mob Council 1962 - 1965 and thereafter that it went ballistic into an order of magnitude that is of absolute all encompassing Transnational Global total Satanic Antichrist control without any change of that thereafter, i.e. the Great Apostasy; see:
“The Holy See’s financial statement values St Peter’s Basilica at one euro.
The Vatican Bank...is ‘off the books’, i.e. not listed on the financial statement.” [1]
A US court described it as “murky” [2] and the last President of the Vatican Bank admits that it offers secret accounts to many who “have had problems with the law”. There are no cheque books. Everything is done by transfer, by cash or in gold bullion, so as to be untraceable. This is perfect for money-laundering. And, as if the nine-metre thick walls of its tower in the Vatican did not offer enough privacy, “God’s bank” appears to have quietly established itself in the offshore financial centre of the Cayman Islands. [3]
As the bank of an
independent state, the Vatican Bank escapes scrutiny from Italy. In addition, it has an impenetrable organisation, with three separate boards of directors. And it boasts another curious feature: it is said to be “never audited”, hence funds deposited there may simply vanish without a trace. [4] The Vatican Bank even maintains that it adopts the remarkable practice of destroying all of its records every ten years. [5]
Increased international oversight
The Vatican Bank is now coming under pressure from three organisations to conform more closely to international banking rules designed to prevent fraud.
♦ In 2009, to be able to continue using the euro, the Vatican Bank agreed to submit to the anti-money-laundering laws of the European Union thus putting itself under the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. It updated its agreement with Italy and the
European Commission to come closer to conforming to European Union monetary regulations against financial fraud (
Article 8) [6] and brought in a Vatican law “approximating” the EU rules at the end of 2010, in order for it to better monitor itself.... [7] (A spokesman has claimed that it is “not a bank in the normal definition of the term” and therefore expects special treatment.) [8]
♦ The Vatican Bank has been in talks with the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Developmentwhich sets transparency standards. However, more than a decade after the OECD began its investigation of tax havens in 1998, the Vatican is still not on its “white list” of countries with good records on transparency. [9]
♦ The Vatican Bank is also negotiating with the
Financial Action Task Force (FATF), which imposes measures against money laundering and terrorist financing and has promised to adopt the anti-money laundering standards set by the FATF, but not any time soon. This lengthy process would involve the Vatican passing anti-money laundering legislation and setting up the equivalent of the Bank of Italy’s Financial Intelligence Unit to monitor IOR’s activities. [10]
Money laundering investigation
On the one hand, it has used its “less than clear” relationship to the Vatican State to claim “sovereign immunity”. [11] This connection with the Vatican State has enabled it to avoid having to answer charges in a US court that after WWII it helped hide and launder millions of dollars of concentration camp loot. [12] And it continues ― when convenient ― to assert its immunity from scrutiny as an organ of the Vatican State. Thus in September 2010 a Vatican spokesman claimed that “The IOR is located within the territory of Vatican City State, beyond the jurisdiction and surveillance of various national banks”. [13]
Yet, on the other hand, the IOR was discovered in 2010 to be acting as if it were an Italian bank, thus avoiding scrutiny of certain money transfers. The Italian prosecutor said that in refusing to give an Italian Bank the requested information the Vatican Bank had demonstrated “a deliberate failure to observe the anti-laundering laws with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital.” [14] Although the Vatican insists this is a “misunderstanding” which can be easily cleared up, an Italian judge has twice upheld the seizure of €23 million ( $33 million) and denied the Vatican’s request for a return of the funds until mid 2011 [15]. Furthermore, in December 2010, three months after the mysterious transaction came to light, an Italian judge criticised the Vatican bank for continuing to hide the identity of its clients. [16]
There are also recent additional unrelated cases which have come to the attention of the police. In one case the agent caught shifting mysterious funds for a rich client was a priest. [17] And another priest apparently used the Vatican Bank to help his father launder the €250,000 he had obtained from European Union funding for a non-existent fish farm, a grant which was then withdrawn from his account by an uncle previously convicted for being with the mafia. [18]
At one time this would have been passed over in silence. However, although the President of the Vatican Bank, Gotti Tedeschi, (reported to be a member of Opus Dei) is a close adviser to Italy’s Finance Minister, [19] the climate of deference before the Vatican appears to be changing and the Italian authorities are becoming bolder in enforcing financial regulation on the Vatican Bank. “The era of omertà is over,” said an expert, referring to the mafia code of silence. [20]
Tax haven investigation by OECD
The Vatican Bank is effectively “off-shore” from Italy.
IOR does not publish its accounts but is reported to hold €5bn in assets. It provides banking operations for Vatican staff, charitable operations and missions worldwide. It also serves an unknown number of private Italian account holders who use the Vatican as a tax haven. [21]
And, in addition, this “off-shore” tax haven appears to have its own “off-shore” havens. Curious is the location of two of the Church’s “independent missions”. These are missions too small to be set up as apostolic prefectures, yet which are still given autonomy, and thus are not part of any diocese. [22] There are nine “independent missions” worldwide, most of them in remote areas with a sparse Catholic population, like Azerbaijan and Tajikistan. [23] However, two of them have been hived off from pre-existing dioceses. These are theCayman Islands (left) and the Turk and Caicos Islands (right), both of them offshore financial centres.
It is difficult to use pastoral needs to explain the Vatican’s decision to excise the Cayman Islands [in 2000] from its natural Jamaican diocese of Kingston, in order to proclaim them missio sui juris [“independent missions”] under the direct control of the Holy See and entrust them to Cardinal Adam Joseph Maida, a member of the IOR board. [24]
For every person in the Cayman Islands, there are two companies and about five investment funds registered there. [25] In 1998, however, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development began cracking down on tax havens. [26]
Q. What is a tax haven? A. Any country that offers low rates of tax to attract business is to some extent a tax haven. The real problem is that many countries refuse to release details on suspected tax dodgers to other countries. [27]
Even after a decade of prodding by the OECD, the Caymans and Turk and Caicos Islands have remained on the list of “promise to do better” tax havens. [28] Another curious fact is that in 1998, the year the OECD started to examine tax havens, the administration, (and presumably its financial records) of the “independent missions” in the Turk and Caicos Islands was moved from neighbouring Nassau away from the Caribbean to, of all places, Newark, New Jersey. [29] “Due to its proximity to New York, Northern New Jersey in particular has become susceptible to the money laundering industry.” [30] ...Guess where Newark is.
Of course, none of this has stopped the Pope from attacking tax havens for robbing the poor and laying the blame for the global financial crisis at the door of “offshore centres”. [31]
Vatican Bank tries to satisfy high-profile COE
Internal criticism of the bank was leaked in Janaury 2012, when letters from Carlo Maria Vigano, secretary general of the governorate of the Vatican, were published in Italian papers.
Much of his criticism was focused on a Vatican financial committee that includes the head of the Vatican bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. He said the bankers were favouring “their interests” more than the Vatican's. In one financial operation by the bankers that went wrong, the Vatican made a net loss of 2.5 million euros ($3.2 million), the archbishop said. [32]
Two further blows to the reputation of the Vatican Bank were delivered in March 2012. The US State Department for the first time listed the Vatican as potentially vulnerable to money laundering, a notch below those states for which it has solid proof of this. [33] And a few days later the large American bank JP Morgan Chase announced that it was closing the Vatican Bank's account, This account, number 1365, was a “sweeping facility,” meaning that it was emptied out at the end of each day with funds transferred to another IOR account in Germany. Over a period of about 18 months some 1.5 billion euros passed through this mysterious account. [34]
All this was followed in May by the forced resignation of the Vatican Bank’s director, Gotti Tedeschi, a member of Opus Dei who had been in charge since 2009. [35] In 2012 it was reported that the Vatican Bank had made progress in satisfying the transparency test of the Council of Europe. Perhaps predictably this involved better promises than performance:
The 241-page report found serious problems with the agency's role as a supervisor or regulator of the Vatican's finances, giving it a failing grade. It said the agency had yet to conduct any inspections, can't sanction one of the two key Vatican financial institutions and that its role, authority and independence needed clarification. [36]
When the COE report was released Monsignor Ettore Balestrero, the Vatican undersecretary of state, was asked whether the Vatican was still trying to get onto the FATF and OECD's “white lists” of states with the highest standards in fighting money laundering. However, noncompliance with these does not carry the same penalties as can be applied by the European body: withdrawal of the right to use the euro. Nor has it prompted banks that traditionally handled the Holy See's financial transactions to sever ties, as happened when EU rules appeared to have been flouted. [37] When questioned, the Monsignor said that trying to satisfy the FATF would be next on the list and he hedged about the OECD. [38]
Bishop: It’s theologically impossible for the Church to launder money
In an unguarded moment in 2005 the Bishop of Aguascalientes in Mexico revealed how Church doctrine can let the end justify the means. Giving money to the Church, he said, “purified” it. Monsignor Ramón Godínez Flores who had studied theology and canon law in Rome explained that “It is immaterial where the donations from drug trafficking originate and it’s not up to us to investigate the source of the money.”
The head of the Education Commission of the Mexican Bishops’ Conference (CEM) used an example to show that it doesn’t matter how money is obtained; all that counts is the “good intentions” of the donor. When the Son of God “received the homage of a woman who anointed his feet with costly ointment”, said the Bishop, “Jesus did not ask, where did you buy that perfume? He didn’t enquire where the money came from, he just accepted the homage.”
Bishop Godínez said, “Whatever donations I get, I accept with thanks.” [39]
A Church official has admitted to knowing of the Church accepting drug money. [40] And, in fact, this appears to be so widespread that the spokesman of the President used the customary term for this ― “narco-alms”. Even the Bishop admitted, “I have known of cases, but they have been purified”. [41]
Related
Curzio Maltese, “
The Secrets of the Vatican Bank” (“
Scandali, affari e misteri: tutti i segreti dello Ior”),
La Repubblica, 26 January 2008, translated by Graham Hunter.
Notes
4. John Loftus, former US Department of Justice prosecutor with the Nazi-hunting OSI unit, quoted by Jonathan Levy, “The Vatican Bank”, ed. Russ Kick,
Everything You Know Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to Secrets and Lies, 2002, p. 19.
http://books.google.com/books?id=T75G7hLlk80C&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=loftus+%22osi+unit%22&source=web&ots=ABfGVLzusl&sig=SeGIC9RubNBDZGHwzRXVsUEh96U#PPA20,M1
5. “Declaration of Avvocato (lawyer) Franzo Grande Stevens in support of defendant IOR's (Institute for Religious Works', i.e., Vatican Bank's) motion to dismiss plaintiff's third amended complaint”, 30 October 2000, Turin, Case No. C-99-4941 MMC, United States District Court, Northern District of California, § 21, “It is the custom and practice of the IOR not to retain records after ten years”.
http://www.vaticanbankclaims.com/vatpr.html
The 2012 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report (volume 2) has three categories for the list of 190 countries vulnerable to money-laundering activities: of primary concern, of concern and monitored. The Vatican has been placed in the second category, "of concern". (pp. 31, 33)
https://www.hsdl.org/?view&did=702517
The press release fo the COE itself carries a less sanguine title:
See also:
1. Once in place, concordats are removed from democratic control forever
Laws can be changed by parliaments, but concordats can’t. That's because they’re supposed to be international treaties, that is, agreements between a real country and the Holy See (the Vatican).
Even in democracies there is only a brief period, when the legislature has any say over a concordat. That is the time between when the treaty text is revealed and when the ratification vote takes place. This can sometimes be only a matter of days, which does not allow proper legal scrutiny of a very complicated document. A number of other legislative tricks may be used to help get the concordat through: sixteen of these are revealed
here. Once the concordat is ratified it is set in stone. That's because treaties cannot be changed unilaterally. Any alteration requires the consent of the Vatican.
And in a dictorship it's still worse. The concordat may be rubber-stamped by the military junta or even go through with no ratification at all, for the signature of the dictator or his foreign minister is enough. Yet when the dictator is toppled, his concordat remains.
Read more
2. Concordats can ensure a never-ending transfer of state funds to the Church
Sometimes the money transfer is justified as compensation for church property nationalised as long as 200 years ago. Concordats can lock in inflation-adjusted payments that cannot be ended unless the Vatican agrees.
Concordats often shift funds to the church by requiring that Catholic schools, hospitals and other agencies must be paid for by the state. This gives the Church the say over what is taught and what services are offered, without having to pay the tab. A concordat can also help Church agencies get tax exemptions, even for Church-run commercial enterprises. And, despite all the state money flowing in, a concordat can ensure that the finances of the Church are kept secret.
Read more
3. Concordats can infringe on human rights
By giving advantages to one religious group, concordats can violate the requirement that all citizens and all religions be treated equally. Occasionally concordats have outlawed divorce, even for non-Catholics. Concordats can also anchor other parts of Canon (or church) Law by stipulating that this is to be used within Church institutions. However, since these also include social agencies, many non-clerics and even non-Catholics may find themselves legally obliged to obey Church rules.
Read more
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