VATICAN CITY
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Vatican City, 21 January (AKI) – A senior Vatican cleric who is on trial for plotting to smuggle 20 million euros from Switzerland to Italy has been re-arrested on fresh money-laundering allegations.
Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, nicknamed ‘Monsignor 500’ for his habit of flashing large banknotes around was put under house arrest on suspicion of using his Vatican bank accounts to launder money.
Scarano’s Vatican bank accounts had been used to transfer millions of euros in bogus donations from offshore companies, finance police in the southern city of Salerno said in a statement on Tuesday.
Police were reported to be impounding real estate and financial assets worth millions of euros as part of a judicial probe of the money-laundering case.
Another priest and a notary who was suspended from his profession were also placed under house arrest in relation to the new case.
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