Third prominent banker found dead in six days

[Holly_Hobby]

114. Vatican & Consulates told to move HSBC accounts

Consulates and the Vatican in chaos as HSBC tells them to find another bank

By Joanne Hart, Financial Mail On Sunday

PUBLISHED: 16:42 EST, 3 August 2013 | UPDATED: 02:58 EST, 5 August 2013

Diplomats in London have been thrown into chaos after Britain’s biggest bank, HSBC, sacked them as customers and gave them 60 days to move their accounts.

Their situation has been made far worse because other banks have been closing ranks and refusing to take their business.

More than 40 embassies, consulates and High Commissions have been affected. Even the Vatican has been given its marching orders.

The Pope’s representative office in Britain, the Apostolic Nunciature, has banked with HSBC for many years but was told to find another bank. One diplomatic source said he believed HSBC feared being exposed to embassies after it was fined $2billion (£1.32billion) by US authorities last year.

http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2384003/Consulates-Vatican-chaos-HSBC-tells-bank.html

5 days after the above...Pope Francis strengthens Vatican law against money laundering and terrorism financing:

Pope Francis intensified the fight against corruption in the Vatican on Thursday, strengthening the law to counter “money laundering, the financing of terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.”

The short “Motu Proprio”, a decree of Francis’s own initiative, strengthens the supervision of financial transactions “in response to a recommendation of the Moneyval Committee,” the European watchdog which carried out a review of the Vatican bank last year.

The decree is just the latest in a series of bold moves on the part of the pontiff to clean up the institution’s murky financial image.

...

What has been hailed as a potential revolution by many religious watchers began with the appointment mid-June of one of the pope’s trusted allies to oversee management of the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) — as the bank is known.

...

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/08/08/pope-francis-strengthens-vatican-law-against-money-laundering-terrorism-financing/