Vatican Watchdog Skips Scandals in Annual Report

Source: Catholic Culture, (by Catholic World News), July 03, 2020

In his annual report, made public on July 3, the president of the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority (AIF) does not mention the October 1 police raid on the AIF offices, nor the abrupt departure of the agency’s top two officials.

Carmelo Barbagallo, who took over the AIF last November, shortly after the raid, reports closer cooperation with the financial-oversight agencies of other nations, and boasts of an “intensification of prudential supervision” of Vatican transactions. He says that a review of safeguards against money-laundering at the Institute for Religious Works found the Vatican bank “broadly compliant” and “sufficiently effective.”

Barbagallo announced that the AIF would be changing its name, becoming the Supervisory and Financial Information Authority (SFIA), explaining that the new name “highlights the Authority’s dual nature as intelligence unity and supervisory (and regulatory) authority.”  ….

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