UNITED STATES
National Catholic Reporter
Nicholas P. Cafardi | Jul. 2, 2013
COMMENTARY
In the last few days, Pope Francis created, in a handwritten document, a five-person group to review the operations of the Vatican bank, whose real name is the Istituto per le Opere di Religione, or IOR for short. That group will have its hands full because, you see, Italian authorities arrested Msgr. Nunzio Scarano, a Vatican official, and charged him with attempting to use the Vatican bank as part of a scheme to avoid Italian fiscal control laws. He is currently a guest of the Italian government in Rome’s Regina Coeli (Queen of Heaven) prison.
Scarano is in jail because of a reported scheme to use an Italian government jet to bring 20 million euros, owned by some friends of his, from Switzerland into Italy. (One wonders what kind of friends they were who did not want Italian authorities to know about the importation of this money.) Scarano’s alleged accomplice, an Italian secret service agent named Giovanni Maria Zito, is also in jail.
The importation scheme fell apart when the fellow in Switzerland who owed the money to Scarano’s “friends” failed to pay it, and Zito still demanded his 400,000 euro (about $525,000) “commission” for arranging the transport. Scarano evidently used his personal account at IOR to give Zito a 200,000 euro check as a down payment then reported the check as stolen, at which point things really fell apart.
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