Vatican hands down first money laundering sentence

Proietti is on trial in Italy for bankruptcy fraud, and was accused of illegally siphoning money from his business to his Vatican account

A Vatican court has ordered an Italian businessman jailed for money laundering, a first for the notoriously secret micro-state. The court ordered Angelo Proietti, 63, jailed for two-and-a-half years, and seized more than a million euros ($1.14 million) that he deposited in an account at the IOR or Vatican bank. The account has been frozen since the case began in 2014.

Proietti is on trial in Italy for bankruptcy fraud, and was accused of illegally siphoning money from his business to his Vatican account. He is under house arrest and can appeal the sentence. He would not serve time in the Vatican itself but in an Italian prison as the Vatican only has holding cells. “This is the first time that this crime has been prosecuted in Vatican jurisprudence,” the seat of the Roman Catholic Church said in a statement Thursday about the December 17 sentence.

The IOR has 15,000 clients, most of whom have connections with the Catholic Church, and manages around 5.7 billion euros in assets. The Vatican’s bank made headlines following the 1982 death of Roberto Calvi, known as “God’s banker” because of his links to the Holy See, whose corpse was found hanging from Blackfriars Bridge in London. Prosecutors believe it was a mafia killing linked to money laundering via the bank. That and other scandals prompted a clean-up in recent years, first under Pope Benedict XVI and then under the current pontiff Pope Francis, with about 5,000 bank accounts closed.

http://www.arabnews.com/node/1426721/world

China ex-deputy intelligence chief given life sentence

BEIJING — China's former deputy intelligence chief was sentenced Thursday to life in prison for corruption. Ma Jian has been found guilty of crimes including accepting bribes and insider trading, said a court in the northeastern port city of Dalian. Ma, who previously was the vice minister of the state security bureau, was also ordered to pay more than 50 million yuan ($7.26 million) in penalties.

The court said in a statement online that Ma used his political power to aid the business operations of Guo Wengui, a real estate billionaire wanted by Chinese authorities. The New York-based Guo has published a slew of online videos in which he makes sensational allegations of corruption in the upper echelons of China's ruling Communist Party.

Guo gained control of a national securities company after Ma sent letters addressed from the state security bureau to threaten and pressure individuals to hand over their shares to Guo. Separately, Ma also obtained insider information about the same company whose shares his relatives later purchased, resulting in profits of more than 49 million yuan ($7.2 million). Ma is the latest top official to be ensnared in Chinese President Xi Jinping's banner anti-corruption campaign, which he launched shortly after taking power in 2012. Xi pledged to take down both high-level "tigers" and low-level "flies" in a drive to purge the ruling Communist Party of rampant corruption.

The initiative has won Xi broad popularity among the general public, but his critics — Guo included — have called the crackdown a convenient way to eliminate political enemies.

https://www.stripes.com/china-ex-deputy-intelligence-chief-given-life-sentence-1.562287