January 28, 2011
10:08 p.m.
Rome, Italy is a beautiful place with an amazing history and unique culture. Even though The Vatican isn't apart of "Rome" itself, it still is apart of the Roman culture and religion which is Catholicism. We would all assume that there will be nothing fishy going on within the Vatican, especially anything dealing with integrity and morality but this is not the case. The Vatican has a bank called the Istituto per le Opere di Religione (IOR), also know as the Vatican bank. The only account holders of this bank is the Vatican employees and religion institutions. So if all these highly respectable and religious people are members of the same bank, why is their chief, economist Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, under investigation for money laundering? A 23 million euro transfer from an IOR account in the Credito Artigiano to two other accounts was flagged by Italy's Central bank as lacking "some information now compulsory under EU-mandated anti-money laundering laws." [Allessandro Speciale] The Vatican calls it a "misunderstanding" . . . yeah right. The IOR doesn't lend money or act as a consultant to businesses, it's more like where account holders deposit money and make transfers. Even though its biggest assest is privacy and keeping everything secret, some events are well documented about "the IOR have served to "clean bribes and it help ciphered accounts for Catholic politicians as seven-time prime inister Giulio Andreotti." [Speciale] Gianluig Nuzzi investigated the laundering of money for mob bosses, thanks to an archive left by the late Monsignor Renato Dardozzim a key player at IOR from 1974 to the late 1990s.
Money laundering is a social problem because it affects bank corporations everywhere. This is not the first time people heard of "dirty" banks laundering money for mob bosses or criminals in general. The banks doesn't care where this money comes from or who they hurt in the process of getting this blood money just as long as they can get a piece of the profit for doing this dirty deed. The corporations who are in charge of checking these kinds of things need to check on accounts on a more regular basis and flag anything that look suspicious, such as transfers or crazy deposits. If we fell to achieve this, the mobsters' power will continue to grow and grow without any opposition.
No comments:
Post a Comment