Amid desperate attempts by Pope Leo XIV to clean up the Catholic Church’s reputation after years of scandals, new troubles have hit the Vatican. This time, it is accused of large-scale money laundering through illegal manipulation of bank transfers.
According to the enclave’s former chief financial police officer, who was literally forced to resign in 2017, the Vatican’s payroll agency could change names and account numbers in transactions after they were made, hiding the identities of the recipients and senders.
The consequences of this could be enormous, as it would allow Vatican officials to transfer funds to private clients without revealing their identities, potentially facilitating unlimited money laundering and violating the most basic rules of fraud prevention.
The Vatican rejects these accusations. Experts who are aware of SWIFT’s work have come to the defence of the Catholic Church. They claim that it is technically impossible to do this. The intrigue is heightened by how closely these accusations are intertwined with the Vatican’s internal politics.
Several years ago, Libero Milone, a former Deloitte auditor appointed by the late Pope Francis in 2015 to clean up the Vatican’s finances after years of scandal and neglect, was accused of espionage.
Milone later claimed that his dismissal came after he uncovered financial machinations involving the former police chief of the city-state and Cardinal Giovanni Angelo Becciu, who was convicted of embezzlement in 2023 after misusing Vatican funds.
