JPMorgan Chase Closes Vatican Bank Account
Mar 21, 2012 11:27 AM EDT
The investment bank’s decision to close a Vatican-held account on suspicion of money laundering is the latest financial scandal to rock the Holy See.
The Vatican is in public-relations panic-mode ... again. But it’s not the pedophile priest scandal or Vatileaks that has the pope’s image-makers hopping.
This time the Holy See faces serious allegations that its curious accounting practices are really a cover for a money-laundering scheme.
On March 30, the Milan branch of the global investment bank JPMorgan Chase will officially close the Vatican bank’s account No. 1365—held by the Institute for Works of Religion, or the IOR—on speculation that the account is being used for less-than-immaculate financial deeds. JPMorgan Chase sent a letter to the Vatican on Feb. 15 to notify them of the closure after the Vatican bankers were “unable to respond” to a series of requests about questionable money transfers from the account. The JPMorgan Chase account was a “sweeping facility” that was zeroed out at the end of each business day.
The account, which was opened in 2009, had processed some $1.5 billion in funds to other Vatican accounts—mostly in Germany—during the short time it was open, according to financial documents published in Italy’s leading financial newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore. There is nothing illegal about the use of sweeping facilities, but in the case of the JPMorgan Chase account, the fact that Vatican bankers couldn’t quite explain the reason they moved so much money in such a short period of time led the bank to close the account. The closure is the product of an ongoing investigation into the Vatican’s alleged creative accounting that began in September 2010 when tax police in Rome froze $33 million in Vatican assets after a covert investigation raised eyebrows about the way the church moves its millions and keeps its accounting. The assets were eventually released in June 2011, but the investigation is ongoing.
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http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2012/03/21/jp-morgan-chase-closes-vatican-bank-account.html?utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_campaign=cheatsheet_afternoon&cid=newsletter%3Bemail%3Bcheatsheet_afternoon&utm_term=Cheat%20Sheet
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