Financial scandal in the Vatican: first prison sentence for money laundering
The Institute for the Works of Religion, the Vatican Bank.
AP - Domenico Stinellis
Text by: RFI Follow
2 min
Angelo Caloia, the former president of the Institute for the Works of Religions (IOR), the bank of the small state, was sentenced this Thursday, January 21 to nearly 9 years in prison for money laundering and embezzlement.
A verdict which is intended to be exemplary and which testifies to increasingly severe justice in financial scandals.
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With our correspondent in the Vatican,
Éric Sénanque
Eight years and nine months in prison.
This is an unprecedented sentence handed down by the Vatican City court: the first time that a prison sentence has been handed down for a
financial crime
.
Until 2009 and for twenty years, Angelo Caloia directed the IOR, the "Vatican bank", splashed in the past by numerous scandals.
In 2014, an investigation was opened against him.
According to Vatican justice, 29 properties of the bank were sold under its authority, below the market price, between 2001 and 2008. Caloia, as well as two lawyers also convicted, received some 19 million euros placed in accounts in Swiss.
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To read also: Italy: in Naples, “corruption stinks” denounces the Pope
Trial for History
The trial opened in 2018 and no less than 23 hearings followed, most of them in the utmost secrecy.
In its verdict on Thursday, the court ordered compensation for the IOR and its real estate subsidiary up to 23 million euros.
Lawyers for Angelo Caloia, now 81, have appealed.
The severity of the sentence responds to the pope's desire to toughen up his anti-money laundering fight in the Vatican in recent months, and to bring the small state into line with European standards.
"
It is a trial destined to go down in history
", commented the promoter of justice of the Vatican during the hearing.
►
To read also: Pope Francis strengthens the fight against financial opacity in the Vatican
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