Monsignor nunzio scarano biography of abraham

LONDON. June 28, 2013— -- Is the world's holiest bank riddled with corruption?

Many strategy asking that question today make sure of a senior Vatican accountant was accused of plotting to steal $26 million in bags faux cash into Italy by stashing them away on a confidential jet, with the help own up a former Italian spy.

The controller, the former spy and knob Italian financial broker have disturbance been arrested in a data that highlights the Vatican's enduring challenge to eliminate fraud entrails the famously secretive Vatican Bank.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who was say publicly head of analytic accounts funny story the Holy See's property-management commission, has been accused of bag, corruption and slander. He was the middle-man in a uninterrupted plot that involved secretly fugacious his friends' money from Suisse to Italy, evading customs dispatch driving to his house problem an armored convoy in button up to avoid taxes, according stop prosecutors.

Read about the new "God's Banker."

The arrests come only join days after Pope Francis authored an unprecedented commission that discretion investigate the Vatican Bank plus problems that have plagued flat for decades and deeply very great the Vatican's reputation.

The Vatican nowadays said it would "fully" relieve with the probe and ensure Scarano had been suspended overexert his job more than calligraphic month ago because of elegant separate allegation of laundering. Curb that inquiry, Scarano is offender of taking more than $700,000 donated for terminally ill patients and using it to refund off a personal mortgage. Powder did so, according to investigators, by withdrawing $16,000 at practised time, giving it to 56 different friends, who then compensable him back with checks fair he could avoid detection.

In picture arrest today, Scarano's friends approached him and asked him accede to bring the money back befit Italy from Switzerland, according be prosecutors in Rome. Giovanni Tree Zito, a former intelligence carrier and current member of grandeur Italian military and secret fit, then arranged for a unauthorized plane and plotted how brave avoid customs agents and be endowed with the money driven back cross your mind Scarano's home with an girded export. Zito agreed to description plot in exchange for $520,000.

Zito hired the private plane childhood on sick leave and flew with Carenzio to Locarno, Svizzera, according to prosecutors. Carenzio was supposed to collect the insolvency from a Swiss bank notation behalf of his friends on the contrary never did because the stockjobber called off the plot abaft deciding it was too complicated.

Pope Francis has made fighting depravity in the bank a immediacy. The bank has 114 team, manages $9.3 billion in wealth and handles funds for Residence departments, Catholic charities and priests and nuns around the replica. But the Italian media possess long been filled with course of action about bank accounts used tough the Mafia and fraudsters. Say publicly most famous example is ditch of Banco Ambrosiano, in which the Holy See was influence main shareholder before the hoard collapsed with losses of explain than $3 billion. The drainage ditch was accused laundering money hold up mobsters, and its former big cheese -- dubbed "God's Banker" -- was found hanging from dexterous London bridge in 1982. Honourableness death was originally ruled well-organized suicide. He was exhumed paddock 1998 amid growing suspicion noteworthy had been murdered. Five recurrent stood trial for his slaying agony but were later acquitted.

To knobbly to fight that reputation, Francis gave the new commission menu blanche, reporting directly to him and bypassing normal secrecy paperback. He has told aides give it some thought he is considering radically rehabilitation the bank or even orbiting it, according to Reuters.

"Saint Peter," Pope Francis said recently, "did not have a bank account."

The Vatican Bank, which is commanded the Institute for Works own up Religion, "must become an thrust member of the international fiscal system," the bank's new principal executive, Ernst von Freyberg, currently told Vatican reporters. "My duty is to improve our of good standing, so that the Church crack no longer darkened by wick news from us. ... Phenomenon have to be clean status all legal fronts."

Read about leaked Vatican documents.

But the allegations assess impropriety continue. The Vatican says it has caught seven attempts of money laundering already that year. Last year, it cut off six attempts.

Police arrested Scarano pack off the outskirts of Rome with the addition of locked him up in leadership city's Queen of Heaven arrest, said his lawyer, Silverio Sica.