Pope fires entire financial watchdog board

Pope Francis sacked all 5 members of the Financial Information Authority (AIF), the regulator of the corruption-ridden Institute for Religious Works, also known as the Vatican Bank. The board members, all Italian, were supposed to serve for 5 years ending in 2016. A Reuters report said the Pope will replace them with 4 experts from Switzerland, Singapore, the United States, and Italy.  In a blog for Harvard University’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, Gregg Fields described the Vatican Bank’s operations this way: “They are scenes reminiscent of a Dan Brown novel: whispers of money laundering and connections to the mafia; a banker found hanging from the Blackfriars Bridge in London; and a powerful American consulting firm delving into the secrecy-shrouded financial arm of the Vatican. “In essence, the IOR (Istituto per le Opere di Religione) operated much like an ‘offshore’ banking haven like Grand Cayman or Bermuda. Like those small islands, the Vatican City-based IOR had sovereign status.”

Read here how the the Holy See’s financial watchdog has fallen into regulatory capture.