Vatican City, Jul 18, 2012 / 10:09 am
The Vatican is welcoming a largely positive report from the European body responsible for monitoring financial transparency, while also committing itself to further improvement.
"In this light, the report released today is not the end, but is rather an important passage of our continuing efforts to marry moral commitments to technical excellence," said Monsignor Ettore Balestrero of the Vatican's Secretary of State at a July 18 media briefing.
The Council of Europe's Committee of experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism – Moneyval – found the Vatican to be "compliant" or "largely compliant" on nine of the 16 "key and core" recommendations for combating terrorist financing and money-laundering.
"The Holy See has come a long way in a very short period of time and many of the building blocks of anti-money laundering and combating the financing of terrorism regimes are now formally in place," concluded the Moneyval report, which was released on July 18.
"But further important issues still need addressing in order to demonstrate that a fully effective regime has been instituted in practice," the report said.