News Summary: Vatican finances get mixed grades
News Summary: Vatican gets mixed report on efforts to fight money-laundering, terror finance
Pope Francis waves as he arrives for his weekly general audience in St. Peter's Square at the Vatican, Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013. Pope Francis has been selected by Time magazine as the Person of the Year. In only his first year, the Pope was selected by the magazine's editors as the person who had the greatest impact on the world, for good or bad, during 2013. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
MIXED MARKS: European inspectors reviewing the Vatican's efforts to comply with international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing praised the speedy overhaul of its legal code, but said it is too early to tell how well the new laws are being implemented.
BIGGEST BEEF: The chief complaint by the Council of Europe's Moneyval committee was that the Holy See's financial watchdog agency has yet to inspect the embattled Vatican bank to see how it was enforcing the new laws.
PROGRESS?: The report said 105 suspicious transactions had been flagged to the financial watchdog agency in 2013 as potential cases of money-laundering, up from only a half dozen in 2012. Three cases were forwarded to Vatican prosecutors for investigation.
