Is Money Laundering the Reason for Unexplained Funds Transfer from the Vatican to Australia? by Edward Pentin

Senior Vatican officials tell the Register they are continuing to investigate reports that $1.8 billion was wired between 2014 and 2020, but what happened and why remains very unclear.

By Edward Pentin, National Catholic Register, January 7, 2021

VATICAN CITY — Vatican investigators have claimed that a report showing $1.8 billion was wired from the Vatican to Australia from 2014 to 2020 is “significantly” overestimated, but many questions remain about the transfers, which some experts say point to money laundering and organized crime involvement.

The Australian newspaper, which first broke the story of the transactions, reported Jan. 6 that the country’s financial crime regulator — the Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (Austrac) — has been working closely with the Holy See’s financial intelligence unit and found “anomalies” in the figures, which are expected to be revised soon. …