LA NUOVA ARCHITETTURA ECONOMICO-FINANZIARIA DELLO STATO CITTÀ DEL VATICANO. PROFILI INTERORDINAMENTALI

The research is aimed at analyzing the anti-money laundering legislation recently introduced in the State of Vatican City, under the pontificate of Pope Benedetto XVI and Pope Francesco. With the globalization of finance and credit, today, money laundering is outlined as a case by transverse reflections, affecting not only the legal framework but also the economical one. This phenomenon, actually, causes a pollution of the markets, as well as a conditioning of commercial transactions through cash inflows, which alter the financial structures and damage the legal economies; consequently, it can be said that the fight against money laundering and financing of terrorism has become a priority, not only of the national States, but of the entire international community. For a long time, both the International Community and the European Union have provided themselves with legal instruments to prevent and oppose these illegal cases, knowing that the require forms of coordinated action between the various Countries. In this context, even the "bronze door" of the world’s smallest State opens to the needs of the times, with the awareness that the common good is increasingly threatened by transnational crime and misuse of the market and the economy, and terrorism (Pope Francesco, Ap. Lett. Motu Proprio “In our time”, July 11, 2013). The anti-money laundering legislation also invests various areas of law, especially criminal law (discussed in Chapter III), then the tax law (discussed in Chapter IV), as well as the economic and financial field. In research, we focus, therefore, on investigating the crime of money laundering and self-laundering, in a comparativistic perspective with the Italian criminal law; in tax matters, on the other hand, there is a detailed analysis of the Tax Convention on the exchange of financial information, concluded between Italy and the Holy See in 2015, triggering a reflection on the tax system and canonical taxes, under the guidelines of the Magisterium and of the Social Catholic Doctrine, in terms of rationality and fairness in the tax imposition; then starting from an analysis of Article 16 of the Lateran Treaty, expressly referred to by the aforementioned Tax Convention, there is a closer examination of recent law guidance case concerning tax exemptions in favour of Ecclesiastical Institutions. In the background the continuous recall to Canonical Law, before the Vatican ordering legislative source: the inevitable reference to the constitutive character of the State of Vatican City, as well as to all the complex sources of law system, developing a reflection about the renewed relationship between the Vatican Law and Canonical Law. In fact, within this unbreakable bond between legal systems, right down to very recent times, you could peacefully say that this constraint was “one-way”: only the Canonical Law was implemented by Vatican Law and exercised a direct influence on the state system (and not the opposite). However, one of the legal reflections of the recent legislative reform is precisely the “expansion” of Vatican law beyond its natural borders: the recent legislative reform actually entails the extension of the Vatican’s criminal jurisdiction against the Roman Curia and of all the institutions of the Holy See, which professionally perform economic and financial activities. It is configured, in other words, a particular application of Vatican Law to entities of the Apostolic See, governed by Canonical law. An impressive reform implemented in the Vatican State, which in all its peculiarities and complexities, aligns to the needs of the current era of globalization (both economic and legal), it is also anchored to cornerstones of Canonical Law and of the Divine Law.