Vatican praised for efforts to combat money-laundering

Pope Francis celebrates a mass on the occasion of the Virgin Mary of Guadalupe festivity in St. Peter’s Basilica, at the Vatican, Saturday, Dec. 12, 2015. AP

VATICAN CITY  — Vatican prosecutors have launched 13 new investigations into suspected money-laundering this year, and currently have frozen some 11 million euros ($12.1 million) as part of beefed-up measures to prevent illicit activity at the Vatican’s scandal-marred bank.

The Council of Europe’s Moneyval committee revealed the findings Tuesday in a periodic progress report on the Holy See’s compliance with international norms to fight money-laundering and terror financing.

Moneyval praised the Holy See for addressing most of the outstanding legal loopholes that it flagged in the committee’s original 2012 evaluation.

But it said it remained unclear how the laws are being implemented, since prosecutors haven’t yet handed down any money-laundering indictments despite having 25 investigations open, half of them launched in 2015 alone. TVJ