Vatican gets mixed report card on efforts to fight money-laundering and terror finance

VATICAN CITY – European evaluators have given the Vatican a mixed report card in its efforts to comply with international norms to fight money laundering and terror financing.

They are praising progress over the past year, while highlighting delays and continued shortcomings at the Holy See's financial watchdog agency. Chief among them is its failure to inspect the embattled Vatican bank.

The Council of Europe's Moneyval committee revealed in the progress report released Thursday that 105 suspicious transactions had been flagged to the financial watchdog agency in 2013 as potential cases of money-laundering — a significant increase over 2012 when only a half-dozen were reported.

The increase stemmed from the bank's ongoing process to review all accounts at the Institute for Religious Works to make sure its customers and assets are clean.