MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Pope's broom again active: names four experts to watchdog Vatican finances

Rene Bruelhart, a Swiss lawyer who heads the AIF and who has been pushing for change

Pope Francis sacked on Thursday the five-man board of the Vatican's financial watchdog, all Italians, in the latest move to break with an old guard associated with a murky past under his predecessor.

 The Vatican said the pope named four experts from Switzerland, Singapore, US and Italy to replace them on the board of the Financial Information Authority (AIF), the Holy See's internal regulatory office.

All five outgoing members were Italians who had been expected to serve five-year terms ending in 2016 and were laymen associated with the Vatican's discredited financial old guard.

Reformers inside the Vatican had been pushing for the pope, who already has taken a series of steps to clean up Vatican finances, to appoint professionals with an international background to work with Rene Bruelhart, a Swiss lawyer who heads the AIF and who has been pushing for change. The new board includes a woman for the first time.

Vatican sources said Bruelhart, Liechtenstein's former top anti-money laundering expert, was chafing under the old board and wanted Francis to appoint global professionals like him.

“Bruelhart wanted a board he could work with and it seems the pope has come down on his side and sent the old boy network packing,” said a Vatican source familiar with the situation.

The new board of the AIF includes Marc Odendall, who administers and advises philanthropic organizations in Switzerland, and Juan C. Zarate, a Harvard law professor and senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a think tank based in Washington D.C.

The other two board members are Joseph Yuvaraj Pillay, former managing director of the Monetary Authority of Singapore and senior advisor to that country's president, and Maria Bianca Farina, the head of two Italian insurance companies.