Cardinal Pietro Parolin, Secretary of State of the Vatican, thanked Moneyval’s experts, the Council of Europe Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Measures to Combat Money Laundering and the Financing of Terrorism, for assisting the Holy See in its efforts to achieve transparency and the financing of terrorism. cooperation in their monetary transactions.
The cardinal welcomed the experts to the Vatican on 30 September when they began a normal two-week visit.
At the Vatican, he said, “there is a slow implementation of systems that allow more monetary flows to be exposed to the dangers of cash laundering and terrorist financing. “That’s why “the interventions and recommendations of Moneyval reviewers are a resource we treasure. “
The Vatican is among Moneyval’s members because its economic activity is not intended to create wealth and well-being for a nation, the cardinal said, according to Vatican News. “The budget controlled through the Holy See and the Vatican City State is basically for works of faith or charity. “
“Precisely because of the fate of precedence of funds,” Cardinal Parolin said, “special attention should be paid to the moral size of investments. “
In announcing the visit, the Vatican press said: “The scope of this evaluation phase is to evaluate the effectiveness of the legislative and institutional measures followed by the courts in recent years for the prevention of money laundering and terrorist financing. ” .
According to Moneyval’s website, the program is designed to “assess members’ compliance with all applicable foreign criteria in the legal, monetary and law enforcement sectors through a peer review procedure for mutual assessments, as well as assess the effectiveness of measures implemented in practice. “and make recommendations on tactics for the effectiveness of national anti-money laundering and terrorist financing regimes and the ability of states to cooperate abroad in those areas. “
Moneyval made his first visits to the Vatican in 2011 and early 2012; the Moneyval report commended Pope Benedict XVI’s efforts to enact stricter monetary laws and regulations, but called for additional reforms and strengthening offices to investigate and in all likelihood prosecute monetary crimes.
Moneyval’s third and final recent report on the Vatican, published at the end of 2017, welcomed the continuation of legal reforms under Pope Francis, but also expressed his fear that the Vatican City State Court had not yet prosecuted for a monetary crime, even though the Vatican’s own Financial Information Authority said it had reported accounts to the Vatican bank to investigate suspicions of “fraud” Array tax evasion, embezzlement and corruption. “
Cardinal Parolin, Moneyval, Vatican Finance
Cindy Wooden writes for Catholic News Service.