Can the Catholic Church’s Vatican
banking system be laundering money for drugs, arms and human trafficking? Good question. In all likelihood, this Vatican account
closed by J P Morgan had to be closed because of Vatican secrecy and refusal to
comply with the simplest of banking rules worldwide.
JP Morgan closes Vatican bank's
account
Thirty years after it was entangled in a scandal
involving the mafia, money laundering and the mysterious death of the man
nicknamed "God's banker," the Vatican bank faces fresh controversy.
The bank - formally known as the Institute for Works
of Religion or IOR - has suffered the ignominy of having one of its accounts
closed by JP Morgan after stone-walling requests for information.
The sanction came less than two weeks after the U.S.
State Department listed the Vatican as being potentially vulnerable to money
laundering.
A Milan affiliate of JP Morgan said it will shut the
account by the end of the month after revealing Vatican bankers had been
"unable to respond" to requests for details about payments into the
account.
A spokesman for JP Morgan in Milan declined to
comment, citing client confidentiality.
The Milan branch had been seeking information since
2010, when the Vatican bank was accused by authorities in Rome of contravening
money-laundering regulations.
In an unusual move, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, president
of the Vatican bank, was placed under investigation and a judge in Rome ordered
a freeze on $30 million held in one of the bank's accounts.
The scandal prompted the Vatican bank to initiate
anti-money-laundering legislation, which is currently being debated by the
Roman Catholic Church hierarchy.
My thanks to Betty Clermont’s recent Daily Kos article that shed
some well defined light on the above tidbit presented in the global MSM.
The Mightiest SuperPAC of All
Integration in
an international monetary network Each bishop, archbishop and cardinal is hand-picked
by the pope and each “official” Catholic organization is tied to the pope
through its approving hierarch. Also obedient to the pope are lay associations
like the Knights of Columbus which, as of 2007, claimed assets of over $14 billion. Supreme Knight,
Carl Anderson, former member of the Reagan administration, sits on the Board of
Superintendence of the Vatican Bank or IOR (Istituto per le Opere di Religione).
They are all part of a world-wide financial network run from the Vatican.
A popular misconception is that the Vatican itself
is sitting on top of some huge fortune. Relative to other hordes, that’s not
the case. The IOR itself is reported to hold only $5 billion on deposit.
The art, antiquities and architectural treasures actually cost the
Vatican a great deal of money to preserve. The real value comes from having
been an unregulated “offshore” tax haven for Italian account holders and a clearing
house for the international financial community to move clandestine funds
around the globe.
It was reported this week that the Vatican was included in a
list of 67 Countries which could be potentially susceptible to money-laundering
according to the U.S. Department of State’s annual drug-trafficking report. “To
be considered a jurisdiction of concern merely indicates that there is a
vulnerability to a financial system by money launderers. With the large
volumes of international currency that goes through the Holy See, it is a
system that makes it vulnerable as a potential money-laundering center” said
Susan Pittman of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and
Law Enforcement.
The London Telegraph had reported that the Vatican Bank was
the eighth most popular
destination for laundered
money, ahead of the Bahamas, Switzerland and Liechtenstein. The reason for this
is that you cannot trace any movement of cash within the bank. “This corruption
is continuing on a regular basis in the Vatican,” claimed attorney Jonathan
Levy. “There’s no reason for a religion to have a bank that does worldwide
commercial activities, dealing in gold, dealing in insurance, dealing in
property and then hiding behind the Roman Catholic Church.”