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Financial authority updates Vatican offices on policies to fight money laundering

June 17, 2020 CNA Daily News 0

Vatican City, Jun 17, 2020 / 06:00 am (CNA).- Members of the Vatican’s financial watchdog authority met this week to update offices on regulations to fight money laundering and the financing of terrorist organizations.

The June 15-16 seminar was held by the new leadership of the Financial Information Authority (AIF), including president Carmelo Barbagallo and vice director Federico Antellini Russo.

“The Vatican regulations are in line with the regulations of the rest of the world,” Barbagallo told Vatican News. “They have also recently been renewed, in particular the law on procurement is at the forefront.”

Barbagallo referred to a law promulgated by Pope Francis June 1 on the awarding of public contracts. The new norms are intended to prevent corruption, including nepotism, money laundering and other crimes in Vatican City State and Holy See financial transactions. 

Russo told Vatican News that the Holy See had taken “significant pioneering steps” in financial security legislation and wanted to extend “not only training but also a form of prevention, of awareness and in some ways of support also to the public authorities of the Holy See, of the Vatican City State.”

The public authorities of the Holy See and Vatican City State are the entities which carry out financial transactions with members of the general public, such as the Vatican post office, supermarket, and pharmacy.

Vatican public authorities also include the Institute for the Works of Religion (IOR) and the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA).

At least one official of the Secretariat of State also took part in the two-day meetings.

Anita Titomanlio of the legal office of the Secretariat of State told Vatican News “we wanted to propose tools to public authorities to evaluate themselves.”

“Then self-assessment questionnaires will be prepared, which will be filled in by the public authorities and sent to the financial information authorities to prepare an action plan, should there be any deficiencies in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing.”

Barbagallo also noted the increased threat of crime which comes with the global economic crisis caused by the coronavirus emergency.

“And so this is a time when you absolutely have to have your eyes more open than usual,” he said. 

The AIF is expected to release its annual report soon. The report usually catalogs the Suspicious Activity Reports received over the previous year and which led the information authority to investigate cases of money laundering and financial fraud within Vatican financial entities.

This will be the first report of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority since an abrupt change of leadership at the end of 2019. 

AIF’s then director, Tommaso Di Ruzza, was suspended at the end of September 2019 after a search of AIF offices by Vatican gendarmes. Five days later AIF president René Brüelhart resigned. His replacement, Carmelo Barbagallo, was named by Pope Francis at the end of November 2019.

Meanwhile, the Egmont Group, through which 164 financial authorities share information and coordinate their work, had suspended the AIF in mid-November. Barbagallo announced in January 2020 the suspension had been revoked and the authority could resume collaboration with foreign intelligence bodies.

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Pope Francis names lay finance expert as secretary of Vatican ‘central bank’

June 15, 2020 CNA Daily News 1

Vatican City, Jun 15, 2020 / 08:05 am (CNA).- Pope Francis Monday appointed Fabio Gasperini, an Italian financial adviser working at Ernst & Young, to the second-ranking position at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See (APSA).

This is the first time in its history that the secretary of APSA will be a layperson. Gasperini fills the position following the end of the five-year term of Msgr. Mauro Rivella in April.

Gasperini is well known in the banking and finance world, with 25 years’ experience advising financial services institutions across a broad range of areas, from retail banking to asset management, investment banking, insurance, and capital markets.

For 16 years, he has been president of financial business advisory services at Ernst & Young, one of the largest professional services firms in the world.

CNA first reported Gasperini’s possible appointment June 12. 

Very early in his career, after graduating from Rome’s La Sapienza University with a degree in business economics and commerce, Gasperini worked in the administration of Vatican City State.

APSA, which operates like the Vatican’s central bank, oversees real estate holdings and other sovereign assets.

Bishop Nunzio Galantino is president of APSA. In addition to Secretary Gasperini, there is an undersecretary, an official for management control, and 13 offices and services. 

APSA has around 95 employees and 10 collaborators, as well as a commission of eight cardinals who work alongside the president. Pope Francis recently appointed Cardinal Daniel Sturla, archbishop of Montevideo, to the commission to replace Cardinal Agostino Vallini, who has turned 80 and is no longer eligible to hold a curial position.

In June 2019, APSA’s councilor Bishop Gustavo Zanchetta was charged with the sexual abuse of two seminarians in his former Diocese of Orán in Argentina. The previous January, the Vatican said Zanchetta had been suspended from his APSA position.

On June 15, a Vatican spokesman confirmed to CNA that Zanchetta has returned to his job at APSA, despite the ongoing trial against him in Argentina. 

At the end of May, Pope Francis moved the office of the Vatican’s financial records database from the management of APSA to the Secretariat for the Economy.

The Secretariat for the Economy has oversight of the Vatican’s administrative and financial structures and activities, including monitoring the work of APSA.

Other recent appointments by Pope Francis have also gone to Italian laypeople.

June 12, the pope named Antonella Sciarrone Alibrandi a member of the directive counsel of the Financial Information Authority (AIF).

Alibrandi is vice-rector of Sacred Heart Catholic University in Milan, a lawyer, and a professor of banking law and financial markets law.

Another laywoman, Raffaella Vincenti, was named office head of the Vatican’s Apostolic Library, after serving as the library’s secretary.

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