Cyprus strikes last-minute EU bailout deal

Agreement set to involve heavy losses for wealthy investors, while those with savings under €100,000 will be spared

The Guardian, Ian Traynor in Brussels, Monday 25 March 2013

Cypriots queue at a Laiki ATM. Under the new deal the bank will be closed with
 deposits over €100,000 seized and its 'good' assets transferred to Bank of Cyprus.
Photograph: Hasan Mroue/AFP/Getty

European leaders reached an agreement with Cyprus early on Monday morning that closes down the island's second-biggest bank and inflicts huge losses on wealthy savers.

Russians would lose billions of euros under draconian terms that are aimed at preventing the Mediterranean tax haven becoming the first country forced out of the single currency.

"Herman Van Rompuy has brokered an agreement between the troika and Cyprus," said an EU source, referring to the president of the European council and Cyprus's trio of creditors: the European commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

A meeting of eurozone finance ministers that started six hours late reached an agreement in the early hours of Monday morning to finalise the fine print of the deal. Savers with deposits of less than €100,000 (£85,000) would be spared but it was thought there would be heavy losses inflicted on the deposits of the wealthy.

Laiki, or Cyprus Popular Bank, is to be closed, with its good assets transferred to Bank of Cyprus, the country's biggest bank, where savers would suffer big losses in return for equity shares. Those with more than €100,000 in Laiki would also be hit hard.

Negotiations got under way amid a hardening of the stance by the IMF and Germany, which insisted that depositors must take the hit for bailing out the eurozone's latest crisis economy.

There were signs of panic in Cyprus as a €100 limit was imposed on ATM withdrawals, with more stringent capital controls to follow if the deal is finalised.

The European Central Bank had threatened to cut off funds propping up Cypriot banks on Monday, which would have precipitated the island's exit from the euro if agreement was not reached at the emergency meeting.

"The numbers have not changed. If anything they've got worse," said Wolfgang Schäuble, Germany's finance minister. He said the aims of last week's agreement to raise €5.8bn – details of which were rejected by Cyprus – had to be achieved. This time, however, savers with less than €100,000 will be spared, meaning the burden falls much more heavily on the wealthy than the 9.9% levy proposed last week for their accounts.

Germany is determined that the island deflate a bloated financial sector that exceeds the size of the Cypriot economy by a factor of seven.

"It is well known that I won't allow myself to be blackmailed by no one or nothing," said Schäuble. "I'm aware of my responsibility for the stability of the euro. If we take the wrong decisions we'll be doing the euro a great disservice," he told a German Sunday newspaper.

Russians are estimated to hold more than €20bn of the €68bn deposited in Cypriot banks. Bank of Cyprus holds €28bn in deposits although it was not clear how much of that would qualify for the "haircut". But it was clear that the losses would amount to several billion.

The Cypriot president, Nicos Anastasiades, held meetings with EU officials in Brussels before the meeting of the euro group – the 17 finance ministers of the single-currency area – which included troika representatives Christine Lagarde, head of the IMF, Mario Draghi, president of the ECB, and Olli Rehn, European commissioner for economic and monetary affairs.

Little progress was reported from the earlier meetings on resolving the stalemate over how to structure a €17bn bailout, with creditors unwilling to offer more than €10bn while expressing dissatisfaction with Cypriot proposals to supply the remainder.

The agreement outlined early on Monday came close to what Lagarde had demanded a week ago and which had been rebuffed by Anastasiades.

Over the weekend Nicosia moved on legislation to wind up Cyprus Popular Bank and introduce capital controls to try to prevent a bank run and the flight of money out of the country.

Cypriots attend Sunday service at Saint-Mamas Orthodox church in

the capital Nicosia on March 24, 2013 (AFP/File, Barbara Laborde)

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Matthew message (Channelled by Suzanne Ward, Feb 18, 2013)

"... The Rothschild faction of the Illuminati, which governed its empire from London and the Vatican, lost its media foothold along with its other powers in that part of the world. A section of the Illuminati’s Rockefeller faction, headquartered in Washington, DC, and New York City, still has influence on major media in the US as well as on Wall Street; and their lingering foothold in Congress is evident in the intransigence that has stagnated progress. .."

In this photo provided by the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore

Romano,  cardinals attend a meeting at the Vatican, Monday,

March 4, 2013. (AP Photo/L'Osservatore Romano, ho)

Archangel Michael on the World’s Movement into the Golden Age, March 24, 2013 – Part 2/2 - New

“… GW: Shifting to events that are taking place in Europe at this point in time, it seems that the events in Europe are reaching or about to hit a breaking point of some kind. Several leaders, including Nigel Farage and allegedly Russian Prime Minister Medvedev have suggested that people should be removing their money from their accounts as the cabal may attempt a last ditch grab for money.

Now, I know, and perhaps many know, that the current system is corrupt and that there will have to be a degree of change in the current system before people will be willing to embrace the new system.

I don’t wish this question to sound alarmist to people, but is what is happening now one of the final, if not the final, straw that will help expose the banking cabal and allow the new system to be implemented? Is this new system ready? Or is it already being implemented? Or is it still only limited to preparatory work?

AAM: No, it is already underway. It is already being implemented. And yes, we do not wish to sound alarmist either, and so we also wish people to know that their resources, what they think of as their money, for those who have saved and put their faith in banking systems, they will be protected to a certain extent. So do not think that you have need to run out and remove all your monies, or that it will be completely gone. But yes, this is the beginning of a transition.

The expression of the lack of faith in particularly the European banking system causes enormous disruption, more significant perhaps than anywhere else. And so yes, it does have a domino effect, but it is not one simply shutting down [the old system] and a new system emerging. It is coming into balance with the new emerging as the old simply fades away.

Is it a last ditch effort on the part of those who have clung to the old paradigm of the 3rd, what you call the cabal? Yes, it is. But it matters not, because it is not going to work for them. Seldom are things such as this situation so black and white. There is always room for free choice and free movement and adjustment.

But in this situation it is simply evolution and expansion. And the expansion of the new, of the new paradigm, of what you think of as Fifth-Dimensional financial systems does not allow for systems that are based on greed and theft and control — and unfairness, basic unfairness, usury.

So, it is rather clearly defined. You have an expression that you use on Earth, “Out with the old.” And this is one of those situations where it is, in fact, the truth.

GW: Okay. So, along the lines of the leadership, or at least some of the leadership of what’s taking place in the financial sector globally, it has been reported that the apartment of the IMF managing director Christine Lagarde was raided last week.

Was this an attempt to expose her as part of the banking cabal, or was it an attempt to stop her from fulfilling the reforms that she is allegedly trying to bring to the international banking system?

AAM: It was an attempt to gather information and perhaps even destroy documentation that she is trying to bring forth for the reform of the financial situation. It was an unsuccessful raid.

GW: Okay. So what I’m hearing in your answer, then, is that Christine Lagarde is working for, I guess, the forces of light to bring the greater change to the IMF. Am I correct?

AAM: Yes. This one has had a real turn-around. No, we do not ever categorize individuals or groups or people as light or dark. But this one has truly committed herself to reformation.

She sees and she has the experience very clearly of knowing what does not work. And therefore she has committed her mission, her purpose to this reformation.

GW: Okay. And could the same be said about the new US Secretary of the Treasury Jack Lew? Is he on board with all the changes and working for the reformation as well with Lagarde?

AAM: He is an agent and an angel of change. He could not be simply on board. He is a moving force. ‘…‘’

Catholic Church Fears Growing Vatican Bank Scandal

Transparency vs. Money Laundering

Spiegel, by Andreas Wassermann and Peter Wensierski 2 July 2012 

A new scandal threatens to engulf the Catholic Church and this time the focus is money. Senior Vatican officials are battling over the future of the Vatican bank. While some would like total transparency, dubious transactions from the past and present could harm the Church's image. 

 

The Vatican scandal over shady bank accounts and millions in suspect transfers began shortly before sunrise on June 5 on Via Giuseppe Verdi, a picturesque street in the old part of Piacenza, a town in northeastern Italy. An elderly gentleman in a tailor-made suit had just left his house with a leather briefcase dangling from his right hand. He was on his way to his car.

It was to be an important day for Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, who had recently been fired as the head of the Vatican bank -- even if it turned out differently than he'd expected. Tedeschi was planning to go to the Vatican on that morning, but he never got there. The 67-year-old banker missed the high-speed train to Rome, meaning he couldn't, as he had planned, get into a taxi at the Italian capital's central station for the short journey across the Tiber River to the Vatican. There, he had hoped to take the documents out of his briefcase and hand them over to a confidant of the pope.

Instead, Gotti Tedeschi found four men waiting for him in the street -- not a hit squad as he feared at first, but investigators with the Carabinieri, Italy's national military police force. Even before he reached his car, they presented him with a search warrant and escorted him back to his house. For several hours, they searched through his sparsely furnished, cloister-like home office. At the same time, other officers were searching through Gotti Tedeschi's office in Milan. Among the objects they confiscated were two computers, two cabinets' full of binders, a planner and his briefcase.

The investigators were pleased. While they made but little headway in their corruption investigation involving a client of a company Gotti Tedeschi had once headed, an Italian subsidiary of the Spanish banking giant Santander, they stumbled upon something else in there search which proved to be spectacular.

The documents confiscated from Gotti Tadeschi, a former confidant of the pope, provided Italian law-enforcement officials insight into the innermost workings of the Vatican bank. The secret dossier includes references to anonymous numbered accounts and questionable transactions as well as written and electronic communications reportedly showing how Church banking officials circumvented European regulations aimed at combating money-laundering.

A Possible Motive

The drama unfolding in the Vatican is now heading toward a climax. First, it was "il corvo," the raven, whose revelations about life in the court of the embattled and exhausted Pope Benedict XVI caused months of unease. Then came the arrest of Paolo Gabriele, the pope's butler, whom the Vatican has fingered as the source of the private papal correspondence that was leaked to the public. And now the scandal surrounding Gotti Tedeschi is providing a possible motive for the Catholic soap opera: money.

The pope had apparently tasked the financial executive with making the Vatican bank more transparent. But by approaching his task with perhaps an excess of zeal Gotti Tedeschi upset powerful forces within the Roman Curia, the Vatican's administrative and judicial apparatus. Several high-ranking officials within the Curia viewed the bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR), as something akin to a trust company for clandestine monetary transactions that is not only used by the Church, but allegedly also by the mafia as well as corrupt politicians and companies. In one of the seized Gotti Tedeschi memos, he wrote: "I've seen things in the Vatican that scare me."

It is a clear turning, one which transforms the so-called "Vatileaks" affair into a financial scandal that could seriously damage the reputation of the Holy See. Internal correspondence dated May 22 from a member of the bank's supervisory board to the Vatican's Secretariat of State notes that the Vatican bank is presently "in an extremely fragile and precarious position" and that the situation had reached "a point of imminent danger."

The next act in the drama is set for Wednesday. Money-laundering experts from the Council of Europe will present a preliminary report on the Vatican in Strasbourg. It currently looks as though they will indicate serious misgivings about whether the IOR has taking sufficient precautions against money-laundering.

Their worries are corroborated by the work of Italian authorities. In questioning sessions sometimes lasting several hours, Gotti Tedeschi told public prosecutors whom he trusted in the Vatican, other than Pope Benedict XVI, and whom he didn't. The banker reportedly fingered Secretary of State Tarcisio Bertone as the ringleader of his "enemies," accusing him of doing everything possible to keep the Curia's accounts hidden from Italian authorities. The Vatican has been trying to make its bank eligible for inclusion on the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's so-called "white list" of financial institutions not suspected of being involved in money-laundering or terrorism financing. But Gotti Tedeschi reportedly complained that: "If we continue with Bertone's line, we'll never get off the black list."

Alarmed Vatican Leadership

Fabio Palazzo, Gotti Tedeschi's Milan-based lawyer, has declined to discuss details of the interrogations and the content of the documents seized from his client. Nevertheless, he stresses that the documents contain "useful facts" that would indicate that there were no legitimate grounds for sacking Gotti Tedeschi as head of the bank.

The Vatican leadership is alarmed. Archbishops and cardinals are far from thrilled that Italian officials are now rummaging around in their secret affairs. Papal spokesman Federico Lombardi has openly threatened Italy's law-enforcement apparatus and urged it to kindly respect "the sovereign rights of the Holy See." In other words, he believes that all those documents including confidential details about the Vatican bank that were seized during the search of Gotti Tedeschi's home should not be in the hands of Italian investigators.

The fears of the pope and the Curia are well-founded. In the past, every time Italian prosecutors have stepped in and confidential documents have found their way to light, the secretive ways of the Vatican bank have always ended up damaging the Church's prestige. For more than 40 years, the IOR, founded in 1942, has been regularly embroiled in scandals, including bribery money for political parties, mafia money-laundering and, repeatedly, anonymous accounts.

Many who have become ensnarled in illegal business dealings with the Vatican bank have been forced to pay with their lives, while others have spent years behind bars. Despite all of its sacred and solemn promises, the Vatican has succeeded in keeping the pope's bank a haven for money-launderers. And instead of being on some Caribbean island, this one is right in the middle of Europe, in the heart of Rome.

Its business model depends on keeping things as shrouded as possible from all financial authorities. Capital gains are untaxed, financial statements are not disclosed and anonymity is guaranteed. The bank's exotic status of belonging to a religious monarchy in a sovereign state the size of a city park has shielded it from investigations and unpleasant external monitoring.

The bank's headquarters are housed in a medieval defensive tower known as Niccolò V nestled right against the Apostolic Palace, the pope's official residence, and is home to a vast amount of money and commercial papers. Here, roughly 100 employees look after 33,000 accounts with total deposits of some €6 billion ($7.6 billion). The direct beneficiary is the pope and his Church; 2010 earnings from the bank were €55 million. Such revenues help make up for a decline in donations from members of his global congregation.

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Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, the former head of the Holy See’s bank compiled a secret dossier of compromising information about the Vatican because he feared for his life, it was claimed. 

Telegraph UK, by Nick Squires, 07 Jun 2012

Ettore Gotti Tedeschi  Photo: REUTERS/Remo Casilli

In the latest twist in a scandal which has convulsed the papacy of Benedict XVI, Mr Tedeschi reportedly gave copies of the documents to his closest confidantes and told them: “If I am killed, the reason for my death is in here. I’ve seen things in the Vatican that would frighten anyone.”

One of the documents was reportedly titled “internal enemies” and contained the names of senior clergy and powerful Italian politicians.

Other emails and letters related to “money of dubious provenance” being allegedly funnelled through the Vatican bank, according to Corriere della Sera.

Appointed in 2009, the 67-year-old banker was sacked as head of the Vatican’s bank on May 24 – the day after the Pope’s butler was arrested on suspicion of stealing confidential letters from Benedict’s desk and leaking them to journalists.

Mr Gotti Tedeschi was allegedly ousted by Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who as the Vatican secretary of state is the Pope’s deputy, in a dispute over efforts to improve the transparency of the scandal-ridden bank, known formally as the Institute for Religious Works.

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Mr Gotti Tedeschi appeared to have compiled the dossier as a means of him defending himself against charges of incompetency, mismanagement and possible money laundering.

The reforms were intended to clean up the Vatican’s finances so that it could be included on the OECD's “white list” of countries least at risk from money laundering and other financial irregularities.

Earlier this year the city state was listed as a “jurisdiction of concern” for money laundering in the US State Department’s annual International Narcotics Control Strategy report.

Mr Gotti Tedeschi was so fearful for his safety that he hired bodyguards and sought advice from a private investigation agency, the Italian media reported.

The sensational claims evoked memories of one of the Vatican’s darkest chapters – the mysterious death in 1982 of Roberto Calvi, nicknamed “God’s Banker”, who was president of Italy’s largest private bank, the Banco Ambrosiano.

After the bank, which had close links with the Vatican, went bankrupt, Calvi was found hanged from scaffolding beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London, amid suspicions that he had been murdered by mafia godfathers as punishment for losing money they had invested in the bank.

“Gotti Tedeschi was nicknamed ‘the Pope’s banker’ and he feared meeting the same end as ‘God’s banker,’” said Il Fatto Quotidiano, a daily newspaper with a reputation for investigative reporting.

The secret dossier allegedly compiled by Mr Gotti Tedeschi was discovered by Carabinieri police after they raided his home and office in Milan and Piacenza, both in northern Italy, on Tuesday.

He was questioned by prosecutors for up to nine hours on Tuesday and Wednesday, during which he reportedly told them: “I’m afraid for my life”.

The raid was part of a separate investigation involving allegations of bribery at Finmeccanica, an Italian defence company that has extensive interests and thousands of employees in the UK.

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No respite for pope as more documents leaked

(SaLuSa channelled by Mike Quinsey, March 16, 2012)
“…. Each project is underway and that will result in a sudden wealth of information reaching you. Events are such that the facts can no longer be kept hidden, and with that there will be an explosion of people coming forward to tell what they know. It may take longer where the Vatican is concerned, as it is akin to a secret society that has kept its dark secrets hidden well away. However, nothing will remain concealed for too long, as you are entitled to know the truth and the extent to which you have been deceived….”  

(Matthew channelled by Suzanne Ward, June 3, 2012)

“ ….   5. Because the dissemination of accurate information is crucial, another good indicator of the light’s progress is that mainstream media censorship clearly is on the decline. For instance, even though the Vatican is one of the kingpins under the Illuminati umbrella, it now is public knowledge that investigation into the Vatican’s financial affairs is underway. Ultimately this will lead to uncovering the cesspool of darkness in that tiny sovereign state, including that it is the international headquarters of satanic worship and a vast storehouse of stolen art treasures. …." - New !

Vatican Bank chief Tedeschi dismissed

BBC News, 24 May 2012

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• Vatican tackles money laundering
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Mr Tedeschi is under investigation
for suspected money-laundering

The director of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, has been removed from his post for dereliction of duty, the Vatican says.

The bank's board of directors unanimously passed a no-confidence vote in Mr Tedeschi, a statement said.

It said he had failed "to carry out duties of primary importance", but it did not elaborate.

In 2010 Italian police launched an investigation against Mr Tedeschi as part of a money-laundering inquiry.

Members of the board believed Mr Tedeschi's dismissal was needed to "maintain the vitality of the bank", the Vatican statement said.

The board will now look for a new director to restore relations with the international financial community, "based on mutual respect for accepted international banking standards".

Mr Tedeschi declined to comment on his dismissal. He told journalists: "I'd rather say nothing, otherwise I'd say ugly things."

The Vatican Bank, known officially as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR), was created during World War II to administer accounts held by religious orders, cardinals, bishops and priests.

It lost £250m in a scandal involving the collapse of one of Italy's biggest private banks - the Banco Ambrosiano - in 1982, with which it had close ties.

'Misunderstanding'

The Vatican Bank has been headed by Mr Tedeschi, 62, a trained economist, since 2009.

When Mr Tedeschi was placed under investigation in 2010, the Vatican said it was "perplexed and astonished", and expressed full confidence in Mr Tedeschi.

It said the matter was the result of a misunderstanding, and that none of its employees were involved in any wrongdoing.

As part of the inquiry, Italian tax police seized 23m euros ($29m, £18.4m) that the Vatican Bank had tried to transfer from a small Italian bank called Credito Artigianato.

A month later, the Vatican set up a new financial authority to combat money laundering and make its financial operations more transparent, ahead of an EU deadline.

Paolo Gabriele (bottom left) sees more of the

 Pope on a daily basis than most cardinals

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