Vatican: Prelate on Trial for Cash Smuggling Re-Arrested

Adnkronos
January 21, 2014

http://www.adnkronos.com/IGN/Aki/English/Politics/Vatican-Prelate-on-trial-for-cash-smuggling-re-arrested_321134215697.html


Vatican City, 21 January (AKI) - A senior Vatican cleric who is on trial for plotting to smuggle 20 million euros from Switzerland to Italy has been re-arrested on fresh money-laundering allegations.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, nicknamed 'Monsignor 500' for his habit of flashing large banknotes around was put under house arrest on suspicion of using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money.

Scarano's Vatican bank accounts had been used to transfer millions of euros in bogus donations from offshore companies, finance police in the southern city of Salerno said in a statement on Tuesday.

Police were reported to be impounding real estate and financial assets worth millions of euros as part of a judicial probe of the money-laundering case.

Another priest and a notary who was suspended from his profession were also placed under house arrest in relation to the new case.

Scarano was reported to have been taken ill on learning of his re-arrest. He has denied wrongdoing in the case.

His laywer has said Scarano was merely taking money from donors who believed they were funding a home for the terminally ill.

Scarano was arrested in late June over the alleged cash-smuggling plot after being suspended in May from his job as accountant at the Administration of the Patrimony of the Apostolic See, the body that manages the Vatican's assets including its vast real estate portfolio.

He went on trial in early December over the smuggling plot, accused of corruption and slander. His accounts at the Vatican bank, known as the Institute for Religious Works, have been frozen.

Italian policeman and former secret service agent, Giovanni Maria Zito, and financial broker Giovanni Carenzio, who were arrested with Scarano over the alleged smuggling plot, were due to be tried in a separate fast-tracked trial.

All three suspects are accused of attempting to smuggle the cash to Italy from Switzerland on a private jet on behalf of wealthy ship owners from Naples.

Scarono's arrest prompted the resignations of the Vatican bank's top two managers and accelerated efforts to bring the scandal-tainted lender in line with international anti-money-laundering norms.

Pope Francis last year set up a five-member investigative panel to probe the Vatican Bank's activities and several of the bank's senior managers were dismissed.