(WSJ) Vatican Seeks to Clamp Down on Its Finances

The Vatican is scrambling ahead of a Friday deadline to finalize new rules for how the Holy See will monitor the movement of funds in and out of Vatican walls and punish money launderers.

Pope Benedict XVI late last year bowed to the demands of the international financial community and announced the Vatican would create a watchdog to police its bank’s opaque finances and bring to justice anyone who commits financial misdeeds on Vatican territory. As the watchdog formally comes into power on Friday, regulators and banks in Italy and abroad will be watching closely to see if the new measures have teeth.

Among them, officials have drafted a measure that would require all Vatican departments to inform the watchdog when they transfer funds inside the Vatican or abroad, disclosing the sender, recipient and nature of the transaction, according to a person familiar with the matter. It isn’t clear if that will be introduced along with other rules on Friday, as it is still being reviewed, the person said.

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