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US SECRET SERVICES allegedly eavesdropped on cardinals before the conclave in March to elect a new pope, Italian weekly magazine Panorama claimed today.
“The National Security Agency wiretapped the pope,” the magazine said, accusing the US of listening in to telephone calls to and from the Vatican, including the accommodation housing cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio before he was elected Pope Francis.
The allegations follow a report on surveillance website Cryptome which said the United States intercepted 46 million telephone calls in Italy in December 2012 and early January 2013.
Among those, “there are apparently also calls from and to the Vatican,” Panorama said.
“It is feared that the great American ear continued to tap prelates’ conversations up to the eve of the conclave,” it said, adding that there were “suspicions that the conversations of the future pope may have been monitored”.
Bergoglio “had been a person of interest to the American secret services since 2005, according to Wikileaks,” it said.
The bugged conversations were divided into four categories: “leadership intentions”, “threats to financial systems”, “foreign policy objectives” and “human rights,” it claimed.
Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi said “we have heard nothing of this and are not worried about it.”
If true, the US spying would be an embarrassing blow to an institution famous for its secrecy.
The goings-on of the conclave are particularly clock-and-dagger, with a system installed in the Sistine chapel where the cardinals meet in order to scramble any mobile phone communications and excommunication for those who spill the beans.
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Can I have my money back now
It’s like’…..burning your furniture – to keep warm!
Why are PwC saying this instead of IBRC and NAMA?
As property prices start to rise nama , ibrc start to dump property
Can someone explain why?
Dumping loans philip, not property. They’re Dumping the loans as they’re non-performing and want to get them off the balance sheet.
If they had the patience, they’d put arrangements in place to allow the properties to return to positive equity and then seek a sale, this recouping more of the tax payers money.
Unfortunately, they’ll sell the loans for a discount and allow the new purchasers to do this and net a tidy profit.
The article outlines that IBRC (IBROKE would probably be a better name) will offload € 15 billion in loans.
Yet the linked article tells us that IBROKE have already offloaded 90% of its loanbook, € 19.8 billion out of € 21.7 billion leaving just € 1.9 billion on hand.
This can only mean, if the previous article is correct, that it is NAMA that is offloading the majority of the loans.
Why the subterfuge?
Why make people think that this is some kind of joint enterprise when it is NAMA that is leading the charge?
Have the shiny suit brigade from the canal something to hide?
Given their obsession with secrecy it would not surprise me if they have, perhaps selling the loans to some preferred customer with an inside track at a serious discount.
The way things go it will all be wrapped up before we know anything, plus ça change.
Who in their right mind would buy this junk?
It might only be worth 30% of face value but if you buy it for 20% it’s a good deal. For the buyer anyway.
@ Irish Revolution
The Banks?
Hedge funds bought it. They will now sell off all the ghost estates etc at a lower price so people that have houses for sale at the min will eventually have to sell for half or take them off the market.
Fab house here in drogheda asking price €325. Hilarious. You could now nearly get a house for that on raglan road or ailsbury road!! So that house is realistically worth less than €150 really.
People and notions ha
What about Bank of Scotland selling on my mortgage & others in their Irish portfolio to a company called Tanager Ltd.
I’m in a tizzy all day because I don’t know what it means for us.
have your say