Vatican cash scandal’s SA bank link
Ugandan officials of Standard Bank to explain unauthorised transfers
Uganda’s police chief received a message from Interpol regarding an ‘unauthorised’ transfer
A STANDARD Bank branch in Uganda has been drawn into the illicit money scandal involving the Vatican Bank.
A branch of Malaysia’s Standard Chartered in the Ugandan capital, Kampala, has also been linked to the investigation.
The Vatican Bank has been embroiled in a money-laundering scheme, and Pope Francis is committed to cleaning up the scandal. He has appointed South Africa’s Cardinal Wilfred Napier to a 15-member task team reform the bank.
International banking giants JPMorgan Chase and HSBC have closed the Vatican’s accounts around the world to reduce risks of money laundering.
This week a Ugandan woman, Esther Nobasa, appeared in the Mbarara District Court, 18km outside Kampala, for receiving large sums of money from the Vatican Bank.
Stanlib and Standard Chartered have confirmed that their officials in Uganda will take part in hearings into how the money was transferred on February 13 this year from the Holy See to accounts under their management.
The scandal at “God’s Bank” has set tongues wagging in church pews in Uganda after Nobasa was arrested and appeared in court on Wednesday. With 15.3 million members, Uganda has the sixth-largest Catholic population in the world.
The investigation began after Uganda’s head of police, Kale Kayihura, received a message from Interpol regarding the unauthorised “transfer” of two billion Ugandan shillings (about R7.7-million) from the Vatican Bank to four banks in Uganda — two local banks and two South African banks.
The Vatican police also sent a message to Kayihura on July 7.
Addressing a gathering of East African and Southern African police, Kayihura said he had received a message from the Vatican and promise of assistance from Interpol.
He said money was wired from the Vatican Bank using various bank swift codes to seven accounts in four banks in the Mbarara district. The funds were withdrawn immediately.
The Vatican Bank is not a traditional bank and is officially called the Institute for the Works of Religion. Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi told the Financial Times this week that the bank was more of a “deposit and transfer” institution because it did not extend credit or loans.
According to press reports, the Vatican police asked the Ugandan government to hunt for those who had withdrawn the money.
The 33 000 accounts in the 72-yearold Vatican Bank include 3 000 accounts belonging to African and South American individuals, pro- jects and institutions.
The bank accounts are identified only by a number, and the institution is notoriously secretive, refusing to publish names of account holders or financial statements.
Since the Italian financial authorities began investigating, damaging claims of money laundering have arisen.
The Financial Times said the Vatican Bank had assets second in size only to those of the United Nations and “has been reported to hold more than $200-million [about R2-billion] in US treasuries”.
In June this year Pope Francis issued a papal decree creating an investigative pontifical commission to investigate the bank.
Last month, when the bank invited 60 journalists to its premises, its president, Baron Ernst von Freyberg, said investigators were scrutinising about 1 500 accounts a month to ensure compliance with international money-laundering standards.
He said the bank was a “wellmanaged and clean financial institution that sufferers from a bad reputation linked to old scandals”.
In July, Freyberg announced the resignation of two leaders of the bank, director Paolo Cipriani and his deputy, Massimo Tulli. The resignations came three days after a leading Vatican official who held accounts at the bank, Nunsio Scarano, was arrested by Italian authorities on suspicion of smuggling à20- million out of Switzerland into Italy.
According to The Tablet, an international Catholic weekly publication, “the arrest of Scarano, a former banker and now a chief accountant at the Administration for the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, is said to have especially perturbed the pope, who has often warned clerics to be wary of ‘money worshipping’.”
Today the pope will lead the world in a prayer for Syria in St Peter’s Square. Napier also called for a day of prayer this week.