Photo Gallery Vatican Bank Suspected of Shady Dealings
The Vatican has had a busy year for scandal. The latest potentially damaging questions are centered on the Vatican bank and dubious financial transactions which officials believe could indicate involvement in money-laundering activities.
Pope Benedict XVI is reportedly taking the accusations seriously and has issued an edict demanding transparence at the bank. But shady dealings have allegedly been going on for decades, and many would like to keep them under wraps.
Documents confiscated by Italian officials include references to anonymous numbered accounts and questionable transactions as well as written and electronic communications allegedly showing how Church banking officials circumvented European anti-money laundering regulations.
The documents in the hands of Italian investigators were seized from Vatican bank head Ettore Gotti Tedeschi. He had been tasked with improving transparency at the bank, but ran up against powerful interests.
Pope John Paul II together with Archbishop Paul Casimir Marcinkus, who headed the Vatican bank in the 1980s, at a time when the bank did business involving foreign currency and weapons with the Milanese banker Robert Calvi and the mafia financier Michele Sidona -- and helped launder illegal proceeds the mafia earned from drug-trafficking as well as bribes paid to Christian-conservative Italian politicians.
