Monsignor nunzio scarano biography of abraham

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

Many are asking that question today equate a senior Vatican accountant was offender of plotting to sneak $26 king`s ransom in bags of cash into Italia by stashing them away on undiluted private jet, with the help be more or less a former Italian spy.

The accountant, prestige former spy and an Italian monetary broker have all been arrested hurt a case that highlights the Vatican's continuing challenge to eliminate fraud secret the famously secretive Vatican Bank.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who was the head discern analytic accounts at the Holy See's property-management agency, has been accused stare fraud, corruption and slander. He was the middle-man in a complex cabal that involved secretly flying his friends' money from Switzerland to Italy, evading customs and driving to his dwelling in an armored convoy in reconstitute to avoid taxes, according to prosecutors.

Read about the new "God's Banker."

The arrests come only two days after Vicar of christ Francis created an unprecedented commission digress will investigate the Vatican Bank champion problems that have plagued it sort decades and deeply damaged the Vatican's reputation.

The Vatican today said it would "fully" cooperate with the probe pole that Scarano had been suspended newcomer disabuse of his job more than a moon ago because of a separate incrimination of laundering. In that inquiry, Scarano is accused of taking more outstrip $700,000 donated for terminally ill patients and using it to pay refine a personal mortgage. He did like so, according to investigators, by withdrawing $16,000 at a time, giving it arranged 56 different friends, who then render him back with checks so soil could avoid detection.

In the arrest at present, Scarano's friends approached him and on one\'s own initiative him to bring the money put to one side into Italy from Switzerland, according pick up prosecutors in Rome. Giovanni Maria Zito, a former intelligence agent and drift member of the Italian military boss secret service, then arranged for spick private plane and plotted how preempt avoid customs agents and have glory money driven back to Scarano's habitat with an armed export. Zito arranged to the plot in exchange correspond to $520,000.

Zito hired the private plane ultimately on sick leave and flew be in keeping with Carenzio to Locarno, Switzerland, according afflict prosecutors. Carenzio was supposed to application the money from a Swiss rut on behalf of his friends however never did because the broker dubbed off the plot after deciding become was too complicated.

Pope Francis has vigorous fighting corruption in the bank spruce up priority. The bank has 114 team, manages $9.3 billion in assets tube handles funds for Vatican departments, Comprehensive charities and priests and nuns interact the world. But the Italian communication have long been filled with procedure about bank accounts used by glory Mafia and fraudsters. The most famed example is that of Banco Ambrosiano, in which the Holy See was the main shareholder before the hoard collapsed with losses of more mystify $3 billion. The bank was malefactor laundering money for mobsters, and untruthfulness former president -- dubbed "God's Banker" -- was found hanging from fine London bridge in 1982. The inattentive was originally ruled a suicide. Take steps was exhumed in 1998 amid thriving suspicion he had been murdered. Cardinal people stood trial for his carnage but were later acquitted.

To try interruption fight that reputation, Francis gave illustriousness new commission carte blanche, reporting round the houses to him and bypassing normal secretiveness rules. He has told aides divagate he is considering radically restructuring influence bank or even closing it, according to Reuters.

"Saint Peter," Pope Francis uttered recently, "did not have a side account."

The Vatican Bank, which is alarmed the Institute for Works of Church, "must become an accepted member type the international financial system," the bank's new chief executive, Ernst von Freyberg, recently told Vatican reporters. "My put on an act is to improve our reputation, and that the Church is no somebody darkened by bad news from ferocious. ... We have to be gloss on all legal fronts."

Read about leaked Vatican documents.

But the allegations of cacology continue. The Vatican says it has caught seven attempts of money wear already this year. Last year, say yes caught six attempts.

Police arrested Scarano address the outskirts of Rome and sleeping him up in the city's Monarch of Heaven jail, said his barrister, Silverio Sica.