Italian Police Probe More Vatican Bank Transfers

Straits Times
July 3, 2013

http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/money/story/italian-police-probe-more-vatican-bank-transfers-report-20130703

ROME (AFP) - Italian police have found 13 suspicious money transfers through the Vatican bank, a newspaper said Tuesday, reporting that a senior cleric arrested last week allegedly offered his own accounts to transfer money for his friends.

The Corriere della Sera daily said that the suspect operations which have triggered money laundering controls totalled more than 1.0 million euros (S$1.7 million) and were similar to a larger 23-million-euro transfer that led to an investigation that is shaking up the bank.

It also quoted from documents in the investigation against Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, the senior Vatican accountant held as part of a sweeping probe of the scandal-plagued Vatican bank.

Scarano is suspected of allowing his friends to use his own accounts at the bank, formally known as the Institute for Religious Works (IOR).