Former 'God’s Banker' could blitz Vatican with cache of secret documents

Former 'God’s Banker' could blitz Vatican with cache of secret documents

10 June, 2012, 20:21


The former head of the Vatican Bank has become the Papacy’s Enemy Number One, after police discovered a trove of documents exposing financial misdeeds in the Holy See. The banker now reportedly fears for his life.
­Earlier this week police conducted a dawn raid on the house and office of Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. Investigators say they were looking for evidence in a graft case against defense and aerospace firm Finmeccanica, which was formerly run by a close friend of Gotti Tedeschi.
Instead, as it turns out, police stumbled upon an entirely different find.
They discovered 47 binders containing private communication exposing the opaque inner workings of the secretive Holy See. They included financial documents, details of money transfers and confidential internal reports – all prepared by Gotti Tedeschi to build a convincing expose of corruption in the Vatican.
A renowned economics professor and head of the Italian branch of the giant Bank of Santander Gotti Tedeschi took what turned out to be a poisoned chalice of a job in 2009, when he became the President of the Institute for Works of Religion, the formal name for the Bank of Vatican. His brief was formidable – to introduce transparency to a lucrative enterprise that had become a byword for money-laundering and corruption.
After a tumultuous three years marked by in-fighting and public scandals, Gotti Tedeschi was unanimously dismissed from his post by a board of Vatican officials in May.
“I have paid for my transparency” the indignant banker said to the media, as he stormed off even before his dismissal hearing was over.
The confidential minutes of the stormy meeting obtained by Reuters showed the banker accused of "progressively erratic personal behavior" and "exhibiting lack of prudence and accuracy in comments regarding the Institute".
But there may have been other reasons.
Aware that his crusade against corruption was failing, Gotti Tedeschi probably began to leak important documents to the media.
The drip-drip of damaging revelations (alongside more personal ones presumably passed onto the media by the Pope’s own butler) has been dubbed 'Vatileaks', and has captivated Italy in recent months.
At the hearing, the board that dismissed the banker also indirectly accused Gotti Tedeschi of being behind some of the leaks, pointing to his "Failure to provide any formal explanation for the dissemination of documents last known to be in the president's possession."

While the leaks were a weapon with which to attack his enemies, Gotti Tedeschi was also preparing a last resort option if the battle was lost – a ‘suicide belt’ that would blow the lid off Vatican.
Several months ago, he reportedly told his friends that he began collecting an exhaustive dossier “in case something happened to him.”
It is this dossier that the police have now apparently discovered.
The Vatican is barely concealing its panic – and wants the folders handed back unopened.
“We have faith that the prosecutors and Italian judicial system will respect our sovereignty—recognized internationally—with regard to these documents,” said an official statement.
But there is little chance the Papacy will get its way this time.
Italian prosecutors have frequently been at loggerheads with the Vatican and have accused it of using its sovereignty as a shield against proper regulation.
If the documents do spark a legal firestorm, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi is sure to be a key witness in any trial. A former employee against his employers, and a conservative Catholic pitched against the Vatican itself.

Allegedly, Gotti Tedeschi keeps a list of personal enemies in the Vatican – people who he had felt would stop at nothing to prevent him from reforming the Institute for Works of Religion. His friends have told the media he is shaken and scared.
Police are now considering putting the whistle-blowing banker under armed protection.

Unholy mess: Vatican amidst mafia money-laundering scandal



13 June, 2012, 18:45


The Vatican Bank is under media fire as reports emerge that Italian prosecutors suspect it of laundering Sicilian mafia bosses’ riches.
­The Vatican Bank is under media fire as reports emerge that Italian prosecutors suspect it of laundering Sicilian mafia bosses’ riches.

The Institute for Works of Religion, commonly known as the Vatican Bank, has so far refused to disclose details of an account held by a priest in connection with a money laundering and fraud investigation.

Father Ninni Treppiedi was sacked from serving as a priest after a series of church funds transactions made by his parish came to anti-mafia prosecutors’ attention this spring. The dealings, involving millions of euro, date back to 2007-2009.

Prosecutors suspect Treppiedi was involved in money-laundering operations linked to Matteo Messina Denaro, a Mafia Godfather on the run. The cleric’s former post in Aclamo, near Trapani, is said to be the richest parish in the Mafia stronghold of Sicily.

Trapani prosecutor Marcello Viola made the request to disclose Treppiedi’s account details over six weeks ago. But the Vatican, though confirming the request has been received, maintains the issue is not mafia-related.

“The letter the Vatican received on May 9 did not speak of any money laundering or mafia issues. It contained concerns over shortages and fraud made by ecclesiastical authorities in the Diocese of Trapani,” the Vatican spokesman told the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera on Monday.

The first reports on the scandal emerged in the Italian media two weeks after the head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was ousted after receiving a unanimous vote of no-confidence from bank overseers.

The banker is under investigation for another case of alleged money laundering. But there is speculation that the actual reason behind the no-confidence vote is that Tedeschi was aware of possible mafia links and leaked names and accounts details to police.

The new media buzz does not add up to the Vatican’s gravitas. Earlier in the week, the office had to deny that Pope Benedict’s butler is being treated “as a scapegoat” in the so-called “Vatileaks case.”

Butler Paolo Gabriele is still being questioned over the passing to whistleblowers of sensitive documents revealing corruption in the Vatican’s business deals with Italian companies. Gabriele could face up to eight years in prison if convicted.

Vatican slams new book of leaked documents as ‘criminal’



20 May, 2012, 20:41

Pope Benedict XVI ( REUTERS/Max Rossi)
TAGS: Scandal, Mass media, Corruption


The Vatican is threatening to take legal action against those responsible for publishing a new book of leaked internal documents. The book sheds light on power struggles and corruption inside the Holy See and the thinking of its embattled top banker.
Pope Benedict XVI has already appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the “Vatileaks” scandal. It erupted earlier this year with the publication of leaked memos alleging corruption and mismanagement in Holy See affairs and internal squabbles over its efforts to comply with international anti-money-laundering norms.
The publication Saturday of “His Holiness” by Italian journalist Gianluigi Nuzzi, added fuel to the fire, reproducing confidential letters and memos to and from Pope Benedict and his personal secretary which, according to the Vatican, violated the pope's right to privacy.
Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi said in a statement Saturday the book was an “objectively defamatory” work that “clearly assumes characters of a criminal act.” He warned the Holy See would get to the bottom of who “stole” the documents, who received them and who published them. He warned the Holy See would seek international cooperation in its quest for justice, presumably with Italian magistrates.
The Vatican had already warned of legal action against Nuzzi after he published letters in January from the former second-highest Vatican administrator to the pope. In those letters the administrator begged not to be transferred for having exposed alleged corruption that cost the Holy See millions of euros in higher contract prices. The prelate, Monsignor Carlo Maria Vigano, is now the Vatican's US ambassador.
Nuzzi, author of Vatican SpA, a 2009 volume laying out shady dealings of the Vatican Bank based on leaked documents, said he was approached by sources inside the Vatican with the trove of new documents. Most of them are of fairly recent vintage and many of them painting the Secretary of State, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, in a negative light.
Much of the documentation is fairly Italy-centric: about a 2009 scandal over the ex-editor of the newspaper of the Italian bishops' conference, a previously-unknown dinner between Benedict and Italy's president, and even a 2011 letter from Italy's pre-eminent talk show host Bruno Vespa to the pope enclosing a check for 10,000 euro for his charity work and asking for a private audience in exchange.
But there are international leaks as well, including diplomatic cables from Vatican embassies from Jerusalem to Cameroon. Some concern the conclusions of the pope's delegate to the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order. In a memo sent to the pope last autumn he warned that the financial situation of the order, beset by a scandal over its pedophile founder, “while not grave, is serious and pressing.”
Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the head of the Institute for Religious Works, otherwise known as the Vatican Bank, gets significant ink. His private memos to the pope with his take on the Vatican's response to the global financial crisis and how to handle the church's tax exempt status amid Italian government efforts to crack down on tax evasion have also been published.
The bank has been trying for some two years to remedy its reputation as a shady tax haven beset by scandals. One of them is the collapse of Italy's Banco Ambrosiano and the death of its head, Roberto Calvi, who also helped manage Vatican investments and was found hanging from London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.
In a bid to show it has mended its ways, the Institute for Religious Works this week invited ambassadors from 35 countries in for a tour and a chat with its managing director as part of a new transparency campaign. The tour came on the same day Holy See representatives were in Strasbourg discussing the first draft of a report from a Council of Europe committee on the Vatican's compliance with international norms to fight money laundering and terrorism financing.
British Ambassador Nigel Baker, who went on the Institute for Religious Works tour, later blogged that the Vatican's reputation depends on showing that its institutions are transparent.
“Plenty still needs to be done. But the Holy See needs to stick to its guns. It is in their interest, and ours,” Baker wrote.