Lights and Shadows of Vatican Finance, The Chiesa, January 27, 2011

Lights and Shadows of Vatican Finance

The Chiesa
January 27, 2011

http://chiesa.espresso.repubblica.it/articolo/1346493?eng=y

The objective is the entrance of the Holy See into the "White List" of virtuous states. But the Italian magistrature suspects illicit operations, and there's discord at the Vatican. The senseless black legend against Angelo Caloia, the president who saved the IOR from disaster

by Sandro Magister

ROME, January 27, 2011 – For one week, the Authority of Financial Information, the new Vatican organism created to make sure that criminal money laundering and the financing of terrorism do not take place in organizations connected to the Holy See, has had a president in the person of Cardinal Attilio Nicora (in the photo), who also remains president of the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.

The main objective that Nicora intends to reach is the enrollment of the Holy See in the "White List," the list of states most active in preventing and fighting the aforementioned financial crimes.

By instituting the AFI and promulgating four "ad hoc" laws last December 30, the Holy See has taken an indispensable step toward reaching this goal.

But the journey is just beginning, as Vatican Radio was cautioned in an interview with attorney Marcello Condemi, one of the four experts working for Cardinal Nicora. Because the GAFI, the International Financial Action Group against money laundering, will examine the Vatican arrangements, eventually requiring changes.

Condemi worked at the Banca d'Italia, and was for many years a member of the Italian delegation to the GAFI, with which the Holy See has already established contacts.

But it will not only be the examination of the GAFI that will dictate the timing of the Holy See's admission to the "White List."

One serious obstacle continues to be the investigation opened on September 21, 2010 by the magistrature of Rome against Ettore Gotti Tedeschi and Paolo Cipriani, respectively president and director of the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, the Vatican bank, for suspected violation of the norms against money laundering in operations totaling 23 million euros, in an IOR account deposited with an Italian bank, Credito Artigiano.

The magistrature, at the recommendation of the Banca d'Italia, ordered that the account be frozen. The Holy See stated that everything had been caused by a "misunderstanding," and that "the nature and scope of the operations under investigation could be clarified very easily."

On September 30, Gotti Tedeschi – who on the previous Sunday had been received by Benedict XVI at Castel Gandolfo – agreed to be questioned by the magistrates of Rome, like any Italian person of interest.

It was a level of cooperation unprecedented in the history of the Vatican bank. In 1993, when he was called for questioning by the magistrature of Milan, the president of the IOR at the time, Angelo Caloia, got the magistrates to submit a request internationally, with the request forwarded through diplomatic channels to the Holy See as a foreign state.

At that point, the IOR responded with a written deposition, also forwarded through diplomatic channels. It delivered the proof of malfeasance – concerning Enimont "payoffs" of about 45 million euros – and received general approval in the press for having cooperated with the legal system. The guilty party, Bishop Donato De Bonis – previously the secretary general of the IOR for twenty years, and then its "prelate" for another four – could not be prosecuted by the Italian magistrature because he was an official of a foreign state, just having been named ecclesiastical assistant of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta.

In the judgment of two members of the commission of cardinals that oversees the IOR, cardinals Nicora and Jean-Louis Tauran, the latter previously the foreign minister of the Holy See and with great diplomatic experience, in 20010 the Vatican should have reacted the same way to the action of the Italian magistrature, requiring an international request between states.

But what prevailed was the different view of the president of the IOR, supported by the president of the same commission of cardinals, secretary of state Tarcisio Bertone.

So Gotti Tedeschi was questioned in the offices of the public prosecutor in Rome. His deposition filled 91 pages of transcripts, portions of which were leaked to the press. In it, he explained his action as "a demonstration of the desire to comply with a new era."

But the magistrates did not deem satisfactory the clarifications given. And to the request from the IOR to release the confiscated 23 million euros, they have so far responded with repeated nos. The latest was on December 20, with the explanation that "it remains impossible to identify the beneficiaries of transfers and checks," and therefore in the absence of "an orderly and transparent development of relations between Italian financial institutions and the IOR for anti-laundering purposes," the Vatican institute "can easily become a channel for the development of illicit operations for the laundering of sums of money [that may be the] proceeds of crime."

It is evident that such a state of affairs complicates the enrollment of the Holy See in the "White List."

In fact, in a note signed by the two magistrates of Rome charged with leading the investigation, Nello Rossi and Stefano Rocco Fava, it says, concerning the consultations underway between the Holy See and the Italian and international organisms dedicated to the matter:

"It is noted that the Banca d'Italia, in the report of October 6, 2010 sent to this [judiciary] office, has indicated that these consultations have been entirely unfruitful."

To these upheavals are added others internal to the Vatican.

"In ten months, more has been done than in twenty years, there are decades of habits to be changed": this statement, attributed to "a high Vatican official" and published prominently in "Corriere della Sera" on October 22, has given flesh and bones to the black legend according to which the legal troubles of the current president of the IOR, Gotti Tedeschi, in office since September 23, 2009, can be attributed to the mismanagement of his predecessor Angelo Caloia, in office during the previous twenty years.

Gotti Tedeschi insists that he never said or thought this. While Caloia has demanded that the Vatican secretariat of state make public reparation for the affront. But in "L'Osservatore Romano," the newspaper of the Holy See logically entitled to make peace between the two, not a word of clarification has appeared so far. Moreover, while Gotti Tedeschi has been a leading columnist for the newspaper directed by Giovanni Maria Vian since before his appointment as head of the IOR, the articles that Caloia drafted during the final phase of his presidency were never accepted.

In reality, the disagreement between the last two presidents of the IOR has no foundation if one simply looks at the achievements of both.

Gotti Tedeschi has to his credit a little more than a year as president, during which he has acted resolutely so that not only the IOR, but all the economic organizations connected to the Holy See may be "exemplary, as well as efficient."

But for all the more reason one cannot help but appreciate the work of rehabilitation and reorganization accomplished by Caloia during the previous twenty years, under conditions that were almost desperate at first, in an IOR half destroyed by Paul Marcinkus and even more by Monsignor De Bonis, the real villain of that period.

When Caloia arrived at the head of the IOR, in June of 1989, Marcinkus was gone. But De Bonis was still there. He had obtained a tailor-made post, that of "prelate" of the Vatican bank, and for a number of years continued undeterred in carrying out grossly illegal financial operations.

Caloia conducted a strenuous battle to oppose De Bonis and convince the secretariat of state to remove him. He succeeded in 1993, but in the following months he had to write to secretary of state Angelo Sodano that even from the outside, De Bonis continued to meddle in the IOR and to carry out his "criminal activity." Detailed documentation of that battle was released in Italy in 2009, in a book by Gianluigi Nuzzi that still sells briskly today: "Vaticano S.p.A [Vatican, Inc.]."

De Bonis died in 2001. A few years of relative tranquility and good profits followed for the IOR, providential for keeping the accounts of the Holy See balanced. Until the conflict broke out between Cardinal Sodano and his successor designate at the secretariat of state, Bertone.

Sodano did everything he could to stay in his position. And when he had to give up in 2006, his last act was to resurrect the post of prelate of the IOR, vacant since 1993, and to assign it to one of his proteges, his personal secretary Piero Pioppo.

For Caloia, it was a new Via Crucis. Like De Bonis before him, Pioppo became the head of a parallel management of the IOR, which bypassed the president.

Secretary of state Bertone repeatedly suggested that Pioppo be removed, but without success. The president of the IOR felt increasingly isolated. When he decided to initiate the procedures for the enrollment of the Holy See in the "White List" and sent the necessary documents to the secretariat of state, as the body responsible for proceeding, he was not even kept up to date with the steps taken afterward by the Vatican authorities.

Caloia's resignation as president of the IOR was in the air. He was replaced by Gotti Tedeschi on September 23, 2009.

Four months later, on January 25, 2010, Pioppo was sent as apostolic nuncio to Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea.

Since then, the role of prelate has been vacant. But it will not remain so for long. For this post, which in the past has always shown terrible results, an appointment is on the way for Monsignor Luigi Mistò, the head of financial support for the Church in the diocese of Milan.