Vatican City, Dec 5, 2020 / 07:35 am (CNA).- Pope Francis approved Saturday sweeping changes to the Vatican’s financial watchdog authority.
The Holy See press office announced Dec. 5 that the pope had ratified new statutes for the Financial Intelligence Authority, renaming the agency created by Benedict XVI in 2010 to oversee Vatican financial transactions.
The body, which ensures that the Vatican complies with international financial standards, will no longer be known as the Financial Intelligence Authority (Autorità di Informazione Finanziaria, or AIF).
It will now be called the Supervisory and Financial Information Authority (Autorità di Supervisione e Informazione Finanziaria, or ASIF).
The new statutes also redefine the roles of the agency’s president and directorate, as well as establishing a new Regulation and Legal Affairs Unit within the organization.
Carmelo Barbagallo, the authority’s president, told Vatican News that the addition of the word “Supervisory” enabled the agency’s name “to be aligned with the tasks actually assigned to it.”
He noted that, in addition to carrying out its original functions of gathering financial intelligence and combating money laundering and the financing of terrorism, the agency had also supervised the Institute for the Works of Religion, or “Vatican bank,” since 2013.
He said that the new unit would handle all legal issues, including regulation.
“The tasks of defining the rules have been separated from those of exercising controls,” he said.
He explained that the agency would now have three units: a Supervision Unit, a Regulation and Legal Affairs Unit, and a Financial Intelligence Unit.
Barbagallo, whose role as president is significantly strengthened by the changes, said that one of the most important novelties was that in future the agency would be required to follow stricter rules on the appointment of new lay personnel.
The watchdog will have to consult a body known as the Independent Evaluation Commission for the Recruitment of Lay Personnel to the Apostolic See, known by its Italian acronym, CIVA.
Barbagallo said this would ensure “a more extensive selection of candidates and a greater control in hiring decisions, avoiding the risk of arbitrariness.”
The approval of the new statutes marks the end of a year of upheaval for the agency. At the start of 2020, the authority was still suspended from the Egmont Group, through which 164 financial intelligence authorities worldwide share information.
The agency was suspended from the group on Nov. 13, 2019, after Vatican gendarmes raided the offices of the Secretariat of State and the AIF. This was followed by the abrupt resignation of René Brülhart, the authority’s high-profile president, and the appointment of Barbagallo as his replacement.
Two prominent figures, Marc Odendall and Juan Zarate, then resigned from the AIF’s board of directors. Odendall said at the time that the AIF had been effectively rendered “an empty shell” and that there was “no point” in remaining involved in its work.
The Egmont Group reinstated the AIF on Jan. 22 this year. In April, Giuseppe Schlitzer was appointed director of the agency, succeeding Tommaso Di Ruzza, who was one of five Vatican employees suspended after the raid.
During an inflight press conference in November 2019, Pope Francis criticized the AIF under Di Ruzza, saying that “it was AIF that did not control, it seems, the crimes of others. And therefore [it failed] in its duty of controls. I hope that they prove it is not so. Because there is, still, the presumption of innocence.”
The watchdog authority issued its annual report in July. It disclosed that it had received 64 suspicious activity reports in 2019, 15 of which it forwarded to the Promoter of Justice for possible prosecution.
In its annual report, it hailed “the rising trend in the ratio between reports to the Promoter of Justice” and cases of suspicious financial activity.
The report came ahead of a scheduled inspection by Moneyval, the Council of Europe’s anti-money laundering watchdog, which has put pressure on the Vatican to prosecute breaches of financial regulations.
Speaking after the release of the AIF’s annual report, Barbagallo said: “Several years have gone by since Moneyval’s first inspection of the Holy See and Vatican City State, which took place in 2012. During this time span, Moneyval has remotely monitored the many advances made by the jurisdiction in the fight to prevent money laundering and the financing of terrorism.”
“As such, the upcoming inspection is especially important. Its outcome may determine how the jurisdiction is perceived by the financial community.”
A report based on the inspection is scheduled for discussion and adoption at a plenary meeting of Moneyval in Strasbourg, France, on April 26-30, 2021.
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So they are meeting on a problem that currently has good stats but not meeting on the presence of active gays in the clergy like the orgy incident in Rome and the two priests caught in a sexual act in Miami with each other last week and the male prostitute in the Milan area two months ago who avers having had sinful contact with 36 priests. But the meeting is about the largely gay area that is currently quiet…abuse of minors. Well that sounds like we don’t need consultancy help.
Does anybody have any information about what is happening to Cardinal Pell? There’s been blank silence for quite some time, and considering that there seems to be a fair amount of evidence that he is being railroaded, I’m concerned.
I wish I could help you out there Leslie. It seems that for some reason things have stalled. As far as I know though: the trial is still going ahead. I have heard him speak a few times and met him once. I have always had grave fears as to there being a fair trial. He said himself once that he doesn’t go making things up. He simply upholds what the Church teaches, come fair weather or foul. There are those who hate him for it.
Stephen in Australia.
I should have mentioned. There is an Australian journal of conservative opinion. The name of it is Quadrant. When in a newsagents; I was amazed to see an essay in it, written very recently by Cardinal Pell. The essay is titled – The Church in a Post Christian World. It is dated: September 12Th 2018. Search Quadrant and you will be able to see it. However, unless you subscribe, you won’t be able to read it in full just yet. The whole matter is of great concern. Hope this has been some help.
Stephen.
39 mnutes ago..ny times…Di Nardo, president of Bishops facing accusation of transferring molestor…..
https://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2018/09/12/us/ap-us-clergy-abuse-dinardo.html
Bergoglio’s synod on “the protection of minors” is a sham. As we all know, the problem is not pedophilia but massive homosexuality among 50% to 70% of all priests and the priest-bishop-Cardinal homosexual networks that are strangling the Church. Still less does the Church need another synod to talk rather than to act. Again, as everyone should know, it was Bergoglio who unilaterally destroyed the bishop sexual abuse investigation-and-trial proceeding that his own sexual abuse commission had strongly recommended. Since Bergoglio has doubled down on his delay-deflect-and-deny strategy with this cynical synod announcement, it is time for the DOJ and the Attorney-Generals in all 50 states to treat him and the American PervChurch for what they are: criminals and moral degenerates.
Paul, I don’t doubt that there are men who are priests and who are gay. There are a few I’ve met that I suspect lean that way. I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt that they are faithful to their vow of chastity. You claim that 50 – 70% of priests are gay. From where do you get that statistic? I’ve been around priests all my life. My closest friend is a priest. I know he’s not gay and neither are the men I’ve known who are priests. Please tell me from where you get this statistic.
It might come from this much discussed and cited 2003 essay by Fr. Paul Mankowski, in which he states: “I would estimate that between 50 and 60 percent of the men who entered religious life with me in the mid-70s were homosexuals who had no particular interest in the Church, but who were using the celibacy requirement of the priesthood as a way of camouflaging the real reason for the fact that they would never marry.” Or perhaps from Sipes.
I think you are quite correct. The Bishop’s Conferences have no canonical authority at all. This is like a high school principal asking the Student Council to address the problem of incompetent teachers. Except that it doesn’t sound so obviously stupid.