VATICAN CITY
Daily Mail (UK)
‘Monsignor 500 Euros’ on trial for ‘plotting to smuggle 20million euros (£16.5million) into Italy’ re-arrested for ‘using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money’
By HANNAH ROBERTS
Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, the Vatican prelate accused of trying to smuggle 20 million euros into Italy on an airforce jet, is facing fresh legal woes after he was issued with another arrest warrant.
The former bishop of Salerno, nicknamed ‘Monsignor 500 Euros’, after his favourite bank note, is now accused of laundering millions of euros through the Vatican bank by disguising it as charitable donations.
Another priest has been put under house arrest as part of the investigation, and a notary has been suspended.
Until his arrest in June last year Scarano was chief accountant for the Vatican’s property portfolio. He denies charges that he conspired with a former Italian secret service agent and a financial broker in a failed bid to bring the cash from Switzerland to Italy in a military plane, avoiding customs.
Investigators yesterday ordered the seizure of assets, and froze bank accounts with a combined value of six million euros.
Financial police in the southern city of Salerno said that Scarano’s Vatican bank accounts had been used to transfer millions of euros in fictitious donations from offshore companies.
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