Ior Board Meets without a President
Vatican Insider
Six months have passed since the IOR’s director Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was dismissed but the Vatican Bank is still without leader. His successor will not be Italian The IOR (Institute for Works of Religion) board, which is still leaderless having controversially dismissed its president, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, meets tomorrow. Vatican sources have confirmed that no announcement of a successor is expected any time soon and that the appointment of the new president - a long and well-thought out process - will take place in 2013. The lay members of the Vatican bank are: German acting president, Ronaldo Hermann Schmitz, of Deutsche Bank; the American, Carl Anderson, Supreme Knight of the Knights of Columbus and one of the signatories of the accusation act against Gitti Tedeschi which was deliberately leaked to the papers; the Spaniard Manuel Soto Serrano of Banco Santander and Antonio Maria Marocco, a notary from the Italian city of Turin. Together, they will discuss future arrangements and ways in which to bring the IOR in line with international money laundering directives. No significant updates are expected, however, on the name of the new president. This will be another point that will be discussed during the meeting. The past few months seem to have proven that the IOR functions just fine even without a president. A number of names ended up on the list of figures that could potentially succeed Gotti Tedeschi. The choice will be made very carefully: timing, prudence and careful evaluation are crucial and show how delicate a choice this will be and how much care the Vatican wishes to take in appointing the person for the job. The Vatican will have to choose a distinguished European figure of international standing and not an Italian. The person chosen will have to guide the bank out of the shallows, where it has remained for some time and at the same time use teamwork to guarantee the bank’s autonomy, making it less “Italian”. Benedict XVI and Vatican Secretary of State, Tarcisio Bertone’s decision to nominate Ettore Gotti Tedeschi as director of the IOR in 2009 was taken with the aim of bringing the Vatican bank in line with the highest anti-money laundering standards. The intricate series of events that led to the president’s dismissal having been in the role for only three years (the way the Holy See appointed him completely broke with Vatican tradition) brought to light internal tensions that were not only linked to the banks management, but more generally to the implementation of anti-money laundering laws in various Holy See organisations as well as in other actions taken on the side. For example the acquisition of the San Rafaele hospital in Milan. Italian banker, Cesare Geronzi, who is considered to have close relations with the Vatican, denied he was a candidate for the position. Speaking to Gad Lerner on Italian television programme “L’Infedele” (“The infidel”), which he appeared on to present a book interview he co-edited with Italian journalist Massimo Mucchetti, he said he would ever never want to be president of the IOR. “I was asked for advice and I gave it - Geronzi said – and the time has come for a deeper separation between Italy and the Vatican. The IOR needs a foreign president, an “outsider” as [Italian financier] Cuccia put it.” Over the past months the Vatican has shown signs of greater autonomy from Italy and the Bank of Italy, which Ettore Gotti Tedeschi was joined at the hip with. Too much so according to some.
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