Vatican reports progress in flagging suspicious financial activity

VATICAN CITY (CNS) — The Vatican bank and other Vatican offices with financial dealings are getting more adept at identifying and stopping suspicious financial activity, according to the Vatican’s Supervisory and Financial Information Authority.

While the authority’s main mandate is to prevent and counter money laundering and the financing of terrorism, its annual report for 2024 said progress also had been made in its ability “to identify — for the purpose of subsequent recovery — the path of money illicitly obtained.”

The 2024 annual report of the Supervisory and Financial Information Authority was released at the Vatican April 9.

The office was established by Pope Benedict XVI in 2010 as part of broader Vatican actions to prevent illegal activities in monetary and financial dealings and to comply with international standards on fighting financial crime.

The Institute for the Work of Religion, the formal name of what is commonly called the Vatican bank, and other Vatican offices filed only 79 suspicious activity reports with the authority in 2024, compared to 123 in 2023, the report said.

After investigation, only 11 of those reports were forwarded to the Vatican City State prosecutor’s office, which demonstrates the “improved ability of the system to intercept cases characterized by elements that concretely suggest some illegal activities,” the report said.

The report listed five “anomaly indicators” most frequently found in the suspicious activity reports: cash transactions; transactions inconsistent with the client’s status or past transactions; illogical or unnecessarily complex operations; negative press reports concerning the customer; and a connection with “risky jurisdictions.”

Because of suspicious activity, it said, three transfer transactions, totaling just over 1.05 million euros ($1.17 million), were suspended and two accounts at the Vatican bank, holding just over 2.11 million euros ($2.34 million), were frozen.

The report also noted closer cooperation with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service and similar government offices in other countries because “the Holy See is strongly committed to ensuring international cooperation and the exchange of information for the purposes of preventing tax evasion and facilitating the fulfilment of fiscal requirements by foreign citizens and legal entities” that have a relationship with the Vatican bank.