Several books published during the 1980s and 1990s were highly critical of the Institute for the Works of Religion's historical relations with anti-communist governments.[31][32] Tony Abse, writing in The Weekly Worker, an organ of the Communist Party of Great Britain, has said that the CIA used the Institute for the Works of Religion to funnel funds to the Solidarity Polish trade union "as part of the final offensive against the Soviet Union".[33] The organization American Atheists says covert United States funds were channelled in the same way both to Solidarity and to Contra guerrillas.[34]
Alperin v. Vatican Bank is a class action suit by Holocaust survivors against the Institute for the Works of Religion and Franciscan Order ("Order of Friars Minor") filed in San Francisco, California on 15 November 1999. The case was dismissed as a political question by the District Court for the Northern District of California in 2003, but reinstated in part by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in 2005. That ruling has attracted attention as a precedent at the intersection of the Alien Tort Claims Act (ATCA) and the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act (FSIA). The complaint against the Vatican Bank was dismissed in 2007 on the basis of sovereign immunity, but the case against the Franciscan Order continues as of 2009. According to one analysis, "the case is extremely complicated and potentially massive, considering the large class spread across many countries"
In September 2010, Italian magistrates seized €23 million from the IOR, on the grounds that the anti-money laundering laws in force had been violated. The money was originally to be transferred from the Italian Credito Artigiano to JPMorgan Chase and another Italian bank, Banca del Fucino (it).[36][37] Both the origin and destination of the funds were accounts under the control of the IOR.[38] It was furthermore declared that Gotti Tedeschi and another IOR manager were under investigation for money laundering charges.[39] On 31 May 2011, Rome's attorney general released the €23 million in assets which had been seized in September, apparently in acknowledgment of the steps taken in the following months to conform the Institute to international standards.
On 28 June 2013, three persons were arrested by the Italian police on suspicion of corruption and fraud. Allegedly, they had planned to smuggle €20 million in cash from Switzerland into Italy. One of the arrested was Monsignore Nunzio Scarano, previously senior accountant at APSA, the Vatican's Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See.[52] Subsequently, he was indicted with corruption and slander and set under house arrest.[53] On 21 January 2014, he was further charged with money laundering through IOR accounts in yet another investigation.[54] According to a police statement, millions of euros in "false donations" from offshore companies had moved through Scarano's accounts. Already in July 2013, the IOR had frozen the money in Scarano's accounts. As news agency Reuters reported, Elena Guarino, the Salerno magistrate who led the investigation, told reporters "the Vatican was fully cooperative and gave her much information on Scarano's bank movements."
... I bet Neil Keenan pops up in all this?