Vatican Bank Board Fires President, Citing Neglect of Duties

Catholic News Service
May 24, 2012

http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/1202168.htm

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, president of the Vatican bank, was fired May 24 by the bank's board of directors, who censured him for neglecting his duties amid worsening management problems.

The board of the bank, formally known as the Institute for the Works of Religion, issued an unusually blunt statement through the Vatican Press Office, noting that members had repeatedly expressed concern to Gotti Tedeschi about the bank's "governance," but that the "situation has deteriorated further."

The statement said that the board voted to censure Gotti Tedeschi "for not having carried out various functions of primary importance to his office," but did not specify the functions in question.

Pope Benedict XVI named Gotti Tedeschi, an Italian banker and professor of financial ethics at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan, as president of the bank in 2009. The appointment was seen at the time as a move toward greater transparency in the bank's operations.

The following September, Italian magistrates placed Gotti Tedeschi under investigation in a money-laundering probe, saying that the bank had failed to disclose information about banking operations as mandated by Italy's 2007 law against money-laundering.

That move followed the seizure by Italian treasury police of 23 million euros (US$30 million at the time) that the Vatican bank had deposited in an Italian bank.

The funds were released in June 2011, after the Vatican brought its banking laws in line with international norms intended to prevent money laundering and terrorist financing, and set up an oversight body called the Financial Information Authority.