September 21, 2010
ROME : The Vatican bank’s top two officials are under investigation for suspected money laundering and police have frozen 23 million euros ($30.21 million) of its funds, Italian judicial sources said on Tuesday.
They said President Ettore Gotti Tedeschi and director-general Paolo Cipriani were being investigated by Rome magistrates Nello Rossi and Stefano Fava in a case involving alleged violations of European Union money-laundering rules.
The Vatican confirmed the Rome magistrates’ action in a statement that expressed “perplexity and amazement” at the move and “utmost faith” in the two men who head the bank, officially known as Institute for Religious Works (IOR) …
Gotti Tedeschi, 65, has been at the helm of the bank for a year and is a close adviser to Italian Economy Minister Giulio Tremonti.
The sources said Italy’s financial police had preventively frozen 23 million euros of the IOR’s funds in an account in an Italian bank in Rome.
Two recent transfers from an IOR account in the Italian bank were deemed suspicious by financial police and blocked.
One was a transfer of 20 million euros to a German branch of a U.S. bank and another of 3 million euros to an Italian bank.
A statement from the Vatican’s Secretariat of State said the bank had committed no wrongdoing because it was transferring its own money between its own accounts.
Gotti Tedeschi, a devout Catholic who has taught financial ethics at the Catholic University of Milan, also heads an Italian unit of the Spanish Banco Santander (SAN.MC), according to its website.
He also serves on the board of several major Italian banks.