Entire board dismissed and replaced with international anti-money-laundering experts in pontiff's latest reform
Lizzy Davies in Rome
theguardian.com, Friday 6 June 2014 14.19 BST
Pope Francis holds an audience with carabinieri officers in
St. Peter's Square Photograph: Giulio Origlia/Getty Images
Pope Francis has made his latest break with the past by sacking the entire, exclusively Italian, board of the Vatican's financial regulator and replacing them with international experts, including a former adviser to George W Bush.
In a move widely interpreted as a blow to the Vatican old guard, the Argentinian pontiff announced he was filling the panel overseeing the Financial Information Authority (AIF) with new faces, bringing their predecessors' five-year terms to a premature halt.
Benedict XVI, who resigned last year, established the AIF in 2010 as part of efforts to bring the Vatican in line with international anti-money-laundering rules. Subsequently, when it became clear it was having difficulty in doing that, the Holy See brought in René Bruelhart, a leading anti-money-laundering expert from Switzerland, to be the AIF's director.
"Bruelhart wanted a board he could work with and it seems the pope has come down on his side and sent the old boy network packing," an unnamed Vatican source told Reuters.
It is not the first time Francis has made the Vatican's troubled finances the target of his reform agenda. In January, he replaced four of the five cardinals overseeing the so-called Vatican bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).
They included Tarcisio Bertone, the former Vatican secretary of state. The four new members of the AIF board include its first woman, Maria Bianca Farina, an Italian insurance executive, and Juan Zarate, a former deputy national security adviser during the George W Bush administration and official in the US treasury.
The others are Swiss philanthropy and non-profit consultant Marc Odendall and Joseph Yuvaraj Pillay, former managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
In a report in December by the Moneyval committee, which monitors the fight against money laundering for the Council of Europe, the Vatican was praised for the steps taken to improve transparency. But the report expressed surprise that regulators had not carried out full inspections of the IOR or the division that manages the papacy's assets.
Pope Francis has made his latest break with the past by sacking the entire, exclusively Italian, board of the Vatican's financial regulator and replacing them with international experts, including a former adviser to George W Bush.
In a move widely interpreted as a blow to the Vatican old guard, the Argentinian pontiff announced he was filling the panel overseeing the Financial Information Authority (AIF) with new faces, bringing their predecessors' five-year terms to a premature halt.
Benedict XVI, who resigned last year, established the AIF in 2010 as part of efforts to bring the Vatican in line with international anti-money-laundering rules. Subsequently, when it became clear it was having difficulty in doing that, the Holy See brought in René Bruelhart, a leading anti-money-laundering expert from Switzerland, to be the AIF's director.
"Bruelhart wanted a board he could work with and it seems the pope has come down on his side and sent the old boy network packing," an unnamed Vatican source told Reuters.
It is not the first time Francis has made the Vatican's troubled finances the target of his reform agenda. In January, he replaced four of the five cardinals overseeing the so-called Vatican bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).
They included Tarcisio Bertone, the former Vatican secretary of state. The four new members of the AIF board include its first woman, Maria Bianca Farina, an Italian insurance executive, and Juan Zarate, a former deputy national security adviser during the George W Bush administration and official in the US treasury.
The others are Swiss philanthropy and non-profit consultant Marc Odendall and Joseph Yuvaraj Pillay, former managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore.
In a report in December by the Moneyval committee, which monitors the fight against money laundering for the Council of Europe, the Vatican was praised for the steps taken to improve transparency. But the report expressed surprise that regulators had not carried out full inspections of the IOR or the division that manages the papacy's assets.