ITALY
NBC News

By Claudio Lavanga and Ian Johnston, NBC News

A monsignor suspended from his job as an accountant at the Vatican has been arrested, a papal spokesman said Friday.

Greg Burke, the senior Vatican communication adviser, confirmed Monsignor Nunzio Scarano had been detained.

Scarano normally works as an accountant for APSA, the body that manages the Vatican’s real estate, but was suspended over alleged financial offenses.

The cleric’s lawyer Silverio Sica told The Associated Press that his client was arrested on Wednesday over separate allegations and was now accused of fraud, corruption and slander.

Sica laid out what the prosecutors claimed had happened in the interview with the AP:

He said Scarano was a middleman in the operation: Friends had asked him to intervene with a broker, Giovanni Carenzio, to return 20 million euros ($26 million) they had given him to invest.