US appeals court nixes Vatican Bank Holocaust suit
An American appeals court on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit by Holocaust survivors who alleged the Vatican bank accepted millions of dollars of their valuables stolen by Nazi sympathizers.
The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco upheld a lower court ruling that said the Vatican bank was immune from such a lawsuit under the 1976 Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, which generally protects foreign countries from being sued in U.S. courts.
RELATED . . . Vatican Bank reported to be facing money-laundering investigation From The Times / UK / December 7, 2009 http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article6946507.ece
"The Vatican Bank is under investigation for alleged involvement in a money-laundering scheme using accounts at one of Italy’s largest banks, according to a weekly investigative magazine.
The investigation relates to alleged breaches of financial regulations and disclosure obligations at the branch, but it is possible that the investigation may be broadened to include accounts held at other Italian banks. Investigators are examining every transaction in accounts held by the IOR from 2006 to 2008, the magazine reported.
In that period, it said that more than €180 million in cheques and transfers moved through the accounts. This is the most serious investigation of the Vatican Bank since the 1982 collapse of Banco Ambrosiano . . .
As investigators consider whether to interview senior officials from UniCredit, Vatican lawyers are understood to be considering whether to argue that the bank is outside Italian legal jurisdiction. In 2007 a Rome court said that the Mafia was behind the 1982 death of Roberto Calvi, the Banco Ambrosiano president known as “God’s banker”."
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Dr. Alan Cairns | 8/3/2009
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