Holocaust survivors from the former
Yugoslavia accused the Vatican of helping Nazi allies launder
their stolen valuables and have asked the European Commission to
investigate their claims.
“We are requesting the commission open an inquiry into
allegations of money laundering of Holocaust victim assets by
financial organs associated with or which are agencies of the
Vatican City State,” Jonathan Levy, a Washington-based attorney
for the survivors and their heirs, wrote in a letter dated Oct.
20 to Olli Rehn, the European Union’s economic and monetary
affairs commissioner. Levy provided the letter to Bloomberg.
The request follows a decade-long lawsuit in U.S. courts on
behalf of Holocaust survivors and their heirs from the former
Yugoslavia and Ukraine.
That case, basing its claims on a U.S.
State Department report on the fate of Nazi plunder, alleged
that the Vatican Bank laundered assets stolen from thousands of
Jews, gypsies and Serbs killed or captured by the Ustasha, the
Nazi-backed regime of wartime Croatia.
The Vatican repeatedly
denied the charges and the findings of the 1998 U.S. report.
Amadeu Altafaj, Rehn’s spokesman, said in Brussels today
that the commission had received Levy’s letter and contacted
Vatican authorities about it. Vatican spokesman Father Federico Lombardi declined to comment on Levy’s request to the
commission.
Vatican Immunity
The U.S. case, which sought as much as $2 billion in
restitution, was dismissed last December by a U.S. appeals court
in San Francisco on grounds that the Vatican Bank enjoyed
immunity under the 1976 Foreign Service Immunities Act, which
may prevent foreign governments from facing lawsuits in the U.S.
The commission should have the authority to probe the
Institute for Religious Works, or IOR, as the Vatican Bank is
called, according to Levy’s letter.
It cites a monetary accord
signed on Dec. 17 of last year. Under the agreement the Vatican,
which uses the euro and issues euro coins, pledged to implement
EU laws against money laundering, counterfeiting and fraud.
Rome prosecutors have also sought to show that the Vatican
bank is covered under European law. Last month they seized 23
million euros ($32 million) from an Italian account registered
to the IOR as they opened a probe into alleged violations of
money-laundering laws by the
Vatican Bank.
“We looked at all the places where the Vatican may have
surrendered sovereignty,” Levy said in a telephone interview.
“The only place we could find was with the euro, where they
placed themselves under the jurisdiction of either the European
Central Bank or the European Commission.”
Swiss Payout
Levy initially contacted the legal office of the Frankfurt-
based ECB and was told to take the claim to the commission, he
said. An ECB spokeswoman confirmed that after being contacted by
Levy, the central bank advised him to go directly to the EU’s
executive arm.
The U.S. lawsuit was first filed in 1999, one year after an
official Swiss commission concluded that Switzerland received
three times more gold taken from Nazi victims than previously
estimated by the U.S. government.
The same year, UBS AG and
Credit Suisse AG, the biggest Swiss banks, agreed to pay $1.25
billion in compensation to Holocaust survivors and their heirs.
In his letter, Levy said “gold and other valuables”
stolen in the “genocidal” murder of 500,000 Serbs, Jews and
gypsies “were deposited at the Vatican in 1946,” according to
“contemporaneous documents authored by Allied investigators”
and “the sworn testimony of former U.S. Special Agent William Gowen.”
He interviewed and investigated the Ustasha involved in
transferring the loot while stationed in Rome after the war.
Euro Coins
Under its agreement with the commission, Vatican City
State, a sovereign nation outside the EU, may issue a maximum of
2.3 million euros in coins in 2010 through the Italian mint, not
including a further variable amount.
The Vatican also pledged to
implement EU legislation against money laundering by year-end.
Rehn said the Vatican has submitted its first draft laws
“on the prevention of money laundering and the fight against
fraud and counterfeiting” and the commission is analyzing them,
according to his reply to a question from a member of the
European Parliament, posted on its website on Sept. 9.
Lombardi on Oct. 23 declined to say whether the Vatican
intends to meet the Dec. 31 deadline for implementing the EU
legislation.
SIC: Bloomberg/INT'L