Five Vatican employees suspended amid financial probe - report


Devdiscourse News Desk | Vatican City | Updated: 02-10-2019 18:29 IST | Created: 02-10-2019 18:22 IST
Five Vatican employees suspended amid financial probe - report
  • Country:
  • Italy

Five Vatican employees including director of Financial Control Office have been suspended on Wednesday following a police raid, Reuters has reported. Vatican police raided the offices of the Holy See's Secretariat of State and its Financial Information Authority, or AIF, on Tuesday and took away documents and electronic devices as part of an investigation of suspected financial irregularities.

It is believed to be the first time the two departments were searched for evidence involving alleged financial misconduct. A senior Vatican source said he believed the operation, which the statement said had been authorized by Vatican prosecutors, had to do with real estate transactions.

Since the election of Pope Francis in 2013, the Vatican has made great strides in cleaning up its often murky financial reputation. Last year, a former head of the Vatican bank and an Italian lawyer went on trial to face charges of money laundering and embezzlement through real estate deals. It is still in progress.

In May, the AIF said reports of suspicious financial activity in the Vatican reached a six-year low in 2018, continuing a trend that officials said showed reforms were in place. For decades, the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion, or IOR, was embroiled in numerous financial scandals as Italians with no right to have accounts opened them with the complicity of corrupt insiders. Hundreds of accounts have been closed at the IOR, whose stated purpose is to manage funds for the Church, Vatican employees, religious institutes or Catholic charities.

In 2017, Italy put the Vatican on its "white list" of states with cooperative financial institutions, ending years of mistrust. The same year, Moneyval, a monitoring body of the Council of Europe, gave Vatican financial reforms a mostly positive evaluation.

Further details awaited.

 

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