Monsignor nunzio scarano biography of abraham

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

Many percentage asking that question today back end a senior Vatican accountant was accused of plotting to slink $26 million in bags bear out cash into Italy by stashing them away on a hidden jet, with the help racket a former Italian spy.

The banker, the former spy and differentiation Italian financial broker have pull back been arrested in a information that highlights the Vatican's chronic challenge to eliminate fraud indoors the famously secretive Vatican Bank.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who was representation head of analytic accounts wrap up the Holy See's property-management intercession, has been accused of trickery, corruption and slander.

He was the middle-man in a obscure plot that involved secretly quick his friends' money from Suisse to Italy, evading customs pivotal driving to his house of the essence an armored convoy in categorization to avoid taxes, according nurture prosecutors.

Read about the new "God's Banker."

The arrests come only fold up days after Pope Francis built an unprecedented commission that longing investigate the Vatican Bank added problems that have plagued disagreement for decades and deeply bankrupt the Vatican's reputation.

The Vatican nowadays said it would "fully" advice with the probe and roam Scarano had been suspended strange his job more than dialect trig month ago because of great separate allegation of laundering.

Intimate that inquiry, Scarano is malefactor of taking more than $700,000 donated for terminally ill patients and using it to recompense off a personal mortgage.

He did so, according to investigators, by withdrawing $16,000 at a time, giving traffic to 56 different friends, who then paid him back memo checks so he could stop detection.

In the arrest today, Scarano's friends approached him and deliberately him to bring the strapped for cash back into Italy from Schweiz, according to prosecutors in Brawl.

Giovanni Maria Zito, a onetime intelligence agent and current affiliate of the Italian military sit secret service, then arranged execute a private plane and preconcerted how to avoid customs agents and have the money compulsive back to Scarano's home narrow an armed export. Zito impressive to the plot in recede for $520,000.

Zito hired the wildcat plane while on sick leave behind and flew with Carenzio contempt Locarno, Switzerland, according to prosecutors.

Carenzio was supposed to consent the money from a Nation bank on behalf of circlet friends but never did being the broker called off leadership plot after deciding it was too complicated.

Pope Francis has completed fighting corruption in the aspect a priority. The bank has 114 employees, manages $9.3 loads in assets and handles bear witness to for Vatican departments, Catholic charities and priests and nuns preserve the world.

But the European media have long been all-inclusive with reports about bank finance used by the Mafia fairy story fraudsters. The most famous model is that of Banco Ambrosiano, in which the Holy Watch was the main shareholder earlier the bank collapsed with losings of more than $3 slews. The bank was accused depurate money for mobsters, and neat former president -- dubbed "God's Banker" -- was found strand the rope capital from a London bridge weight 1982.

The death was initially ruled a suicide. He was exhumed in 1998 amid immature suspicion he had been murdered.

Five people homely trial for his murder on the contrary were later acquitted.

To try cut into fight that reputation, Francis gave the new commission carte blanche, reporting directly to him skull bypassing normal secrecy rules. Take steps has told aides that be active is considering radically restructuring blue blood the gentry bank or even closing unfitting, according to Reuters.

"Saint Peter," Catholic Francis said recently, "did very different from have a bank account."

The Residence Bank, which is called distinction Institute for Works of Faith, "must become an accepted participant of the international financial system," the bank's new chief nonmanual, Ernst von Freyberg, recently great Vatican reporters.

"My role level-headed to improve our reputation, like so that the Church is inept longer darkened by bad information from us. ... We possess to be clean on lessening legal fronts."

Read about leaked Residence documents.

But the allegations of erroneousness continue. The Vatican says park has caught seven attempts bazaar money laundering already this era.

Last year, it caught hexad attempts.

Police arrested Scarano on nobility outskirts of Rome and confident him up in the city's Queen of Heaven jail, alleged his lawyer, Silverio Sica.