Italy, Vatican near agreement on financial exchanges?

July 25, 2013

The Vatican is close to an unprecedented agreement with the government of Italy on sharing information about financial transactions, according to the Reuters news service.

In an exclusive report, Reuters says that the Vatican’s Financial Information Authority and the Italian Financial Intelligence Unit will sign an accord on measures to combat money-laundering. The agreement would help to resolve simmering tensions over transparency issues that prompted Italian banks to stop doing business with the Vatican bank and stop processing debit-card transactions at offices and ATMs inside Vatican City.

The Vatican has already reached similar financial-disclosure agreements with other nations. (An agreement with the US was reached in May.) The agreement with Italy would be far more important, however, because of the volume of transactions between the Vatican and the surrounding city of Rome.

 

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Further information:

• Exclusive: Vatican, Italy near deal on bank information exchange - sources (Reuters)
• Holy See, US sign agreement to combat money laundering, terrorism financing (CWN, 5/8)