Vatican Bank Investigated For Money Laundering – Again.
I wonder which banking official will suddenly die during this investigation? Victor L. Simpson and Nicole Winfield report for AP:
VATICAN CITY – This is no ordinary bank: The ATMs are in Latin. Priests use a private entrance. A life-size portrait of Pope Benedict XVI hangs on the wall.
Nevertheless, the Institute for Religious Works is a bank, and it’s under harsh new scrutiny in a case involving money-laundering allegations that led police to seize euro23 million ($30 million) in Vatican assets in September. Critics say the case shows that the “Vatican Bank” has never shed its penchant for secrecy and scandal.
The Vatican calls the seizure of assets a “misunderstanding” and expresses optimism it will be quickly cleared up. But court documents show that prosecutors say the Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws “with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital.” The documents also reveal investigators’ suspicions that…
Want To Get Into A Recession-Busting Business? Join The Mafia
From Reuters:
Italy’s mafia crime syndicates bucked the recession in 2009 to raise ‘profits’ by almost 8 percent with the financial crisis making companies and even the stock market even more vulnerable to cash-flush mobsters.
“Mafia Inc. is reinforcing its position as the number one Italian company,” said a report published on Wednesday by a body whose members bear the brunt of mafia extortion and crimes, the small business and shopkeepers’ association Confesercenti.
It estimated that the impact on business equaled about 7 percent of Italy’s economic output, enjoying healthy growth in a year when the Italian economy shrank by almost 5 percent.
Experts had predicted when the crisis began that Calabria’s ‘Ndrangheta, with its huge slice of the global drugs trade, Sicily’s Cosa Nostra, Naples’ violent Camorra and Puglia’s Sacra Corona Unita would see more demand for loan-sharking.
But the report said mobsters had also been able to launder their earnings by buying up…
Drug Money Rescued The World’s Banks
Who were the heroes who brought the United States and the rest of the world away from the brink of financial catastrophe this past year? Time person-of-the-year Ben Bernanke and co.? Nope, more like the Mexican Mafia. From the Guardian:
Drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis, [says] the United Nations’ drugs and crime tzar.
Antonio Maria Costa, head of the UN Office on Drugs and Crime, said he has seen evidence that the proceeds of organized crime were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year. He said that a majority of the $352bn of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.
This will raise questions about crime’s influence on the economic system at times of crisis.
