Swiss court rules Vatican bank must turn over account information to Italian prosecutors
January 27, 2015
A court in Switzerland has ruled that Italian prosecutors should have access to information about an account held by the Vatican bank, the Institute for Religious Works (IOR).
The Swiss federal criminal court rejected an appeal from the IOR, which had sought to claim sovereign immunity in a bid to stop release of the information. The court ruled that the information sought by prosecutors was not related to the functions of the Holy See as a sovereign state.
The prosecutors are investigating an IOR account which they suspect was used for money-laundering between the years 2007 and 2008. The suspect transactions date from a period well before the Vatican undertook a series of reforms to the bring the IOR into line with current European banking regulations.
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