ROME
Daily Mail (UK)
By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
PUBLISHED: 11:37 EST, 1 July 2013
A Vatican priest arrested in a £17million smuggling plot has admitted he behaved wrongly but said he was only trying to help out friends.
Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, dubbed ‘Don 500’ because the 500 euro note is his favourite banknote, was questioned for three hours by Judge Barbara Callari.
His lawyer Silverio Sica said that Scarano is not well in prison and had asked for house arrest to await a decision on his fate, expected in a day or two.
Scarano was arrested on Friday with two others accused of plotting to smuggle 20million euros from a Swiss bank account into Italy by private jet without reporting it to customs.
Note: This is an Abuse Tracker excerpt. Click the title to view the full text of the original article. If the original article is no longer available, see our News Archive.