Vatican bank report blasts management and lack of transparency The Vatican has been trying to shed its image as a suspect financial centre since 1982, when Roberto Calvi, an Italian known as "God's Banker" because of his links to the Vatican, was found hanging from London's Blackfriars Bridge. Although Vatican officials say they are determined to improve financial transparency in order to qualify for inclusion on the global white list, Wednesday's report showed they have their work cut out. It awarded the Vatican negative grades of "partially compliant" or "non compliant" on seven of the 16 so-called core and key recommendations, while handing out grades of "compliant" or "largely compliant" on the other nine. The seven negative grades included insufficient customer due diligence, insufficient compliance on reporting of suspicious transactions, and insufficient supervision and monitoring. On the plus side, the report said the Vatican "has come a long way in a short period of time" and that many of the "building blocks" to combat money laundering were in place, even though more had to be done. Moneyval, "The Committee of Experts on the Evaluation of Anti-Money Laundering Measures and the Financing of Terrorism," is a monitoring mechanism of the 47-nation Council of Europe that tries to ensure that member states comply with international financial standards. Moneyval does not maintain its own "white list," but supplies information that could eventually be used by other organisations, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), to determine whether the Vatican belongs on a "black" or "grey" list of countries that fail to measure up. Any such decision is at least a year away, and would depend on a follow-up evaluation of how well the Vatican implements recommendations in Wednesday's report. The Moneyval evaluation, which the Vatican requested several years ago, grades a country against 49 recommendations, of which 16 are deemed "core and key." It is not uncommon for countries to receive partially compliant or non-compliant marks on their first and even subsequent evaluations, accompanied by suggestions on how to improve. Vatican sources compared the performance with Italy, which they said had five non-compliant or partially compliant marks on "core and key" recommendations in a 2005 evaluation. In 2010, the Vatican drafted new financial transparency laws and set up internal regulations to make sure its bank and all other departments that administer the Catholic Church around the world adhered to international standards on money laundering and terrorism financing. Moneyval inspectors visited the Vatican in 2011 and 2012.