MONEYVAL – Vatican: Mutual Evaluation Report

Olga Sakun – Vatican City

MONEYVAL has published a Mutual Evaluation Report that assesses the effectiveness of the Holy See and Vatican’s anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing measures. The overall assessment of these measures is positive: on five counts, the Vatican jurisdiction was rated “significant level of effectiveness” and on six – “moderate level of effectiveness”. As Carmelo Barbagallo, the head of the Office for Supervision and Financial Information, explained in an interview with Vatican News, only in rare cases MONEYVAL assesses the level of efficiency as significant, while the Vatican received such an assessment on very important points: international cooperation, supervision, financial system, legal entities and countering the financing of terrorism.

Among the areas where the Vatican should make more efforts, MONEYVAL cited the speed of trials and the effectiveness of judgments. For this item, the level was assessed as “moderate”, that is, requiring improvement. However, as explained by Barbagallo, no one received a higher rating on this item. It should also be noted that the speed of litigation in the Vatican largely depends on foreign jurisdictions.