Cardinal George Pell flagged a system to hide the ‘true owner’ in international transfers in 2016
Cardinal George Pell instructed the Vatican’s auditor general to conduct an “urgent and immediate” investigation into “potentially illegal” banking transactions by APSA, the Holy See’s asset manager and paymaster, in a 2016 memo obtained by The Pillar.
The memo, dated April 8, 2016, when Pell was the prefect of the Vatican’s Secretariat for the Economy, said that the cardinal had discovered a means by which APSA could alter financial records to “shield the true identity of owner/source of funds” in the SWIFT system, which records international banking transactions.
Pell asked the then-auditor general of the Vatican, Libero Milone, to undertake an immediate investigation into evidence that several transactions appeared to have been altered in this way, and to make urgent recommendations for reform to the system.
The 2016 memo emerged one day after APSA, which was subject to several waves of institutional reform during the Francis pontificate, recorded a profit of 62.2 million euros (around $73 million) in 2024, up from 49.5 million euros ($58 million) in 2023.
The allegations presented by Pell, while made nine years ago, are potentially serious for the Vatican’s international financial status, since they came weeks after APSA was exempted from international oversight.
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