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The Holy See has said it will co-operate fully with a fraud and corruption investigation into the money-smuggling activities of a senior cleric who headed the office that oversees Vatican property and investments.
Monsignor Nunzio Scarano was arrested on a charge of attempting to smuggle €20 million ($NZ33.5 million) into Italy illegally. He was already being investigated on suspicion of money-laundering.
Scarano, a senior accountant aged 61, was arrested along with an Italian secret service agent and a financial broker.
A Reuters correspondent said a magistrate’s report on the plot read like a spy novel — involving a private plane that was to collect the cash in Switzerland, burned cell phones, a shady financier and the allegedly corrupt secret service agent who promised to slip the money past customs.
The magistrate said Scarano felt he could act with impunity because he had connections with the Vatican Bank — an agency he saw as “the only safe and rapid instrument for financial and banking operations that could evade — if not outright violate — laws against money laundering and tax evasion”.
Court documents said there was no indication so far that the bank was directly involved in Scarano’s attempt to smuggle the money into Italy on behalf of the wealthy d’Amico shipowning family in southern Italy.
But Italian newspapers speculated that Scarano may have been planning to use the bank to launder at least some of the Swiss money for his friends later.
The €20 million belonged to the d’Amicos and was presumably being held in Switzerland to avoid paying Italian taxes. Scarano apparently undertook to smuggle the money back to Italy.
“As far as I know, Father Nunzio was only trying to help some friends and then entered a mechanism that later revealed to be dangerous for him too,” Scarno’s lawyer said. “I believe he did it with naivety”.
Sources:
Image: Catholic Herald
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