Priest’s money plot spotlights Vatican’s shady bank

A VATICAN priest, an Italian secret service agent and a financier were arrested on Friday on suspicion of trying to bring à20- million (about R261million) into the country illegally in the first scandal to hit Pope Francis.

The arrests came two days after the pope appointed a special commission to oversee the Vatican bank as part of an effort to clean up its murky finances.

Nunzio Scarano, 61, was arrested after allegedly trying to bring à20- million in cash into Italy from Switzerland aboard an Italian government plane in an attempt to circumvent laws on importing money.

The cash allegedly belonged to three brothers from an Italian family of shipping magnates — Paolo, Cesare and Maurizio D’Amico — who wanted it returned to them, investigators said.

Scarano allegedly put together the plot with the help of Giovanni Carenzio, a broker, and Giovanni Maria Zito, an Italian secret service agent who was suspended three months ago from Aisi, Italy’s domestic intelligence agency.

The operation failed because Carenzio reneged on the deal, lawyers said. Zito was promised a à400 000 “commission” for his part in the plot, but he only received à200 000.

Scarano, who was a bank teller before becoming a priest in 1987, was the head of accounts analysis in a Vatican agency that manages the assets of the Holy See and that is linked to the city state’s bank. He was suspended a month ago. After his arrest he was taken to Regina Coeli (Queen of the Skies), a prison in central Rome.

“He will clarify everything to the magistrates in Rome,” said Silverio Sica, his lawyer.

Scarano is also under investigation in an alleged money- laundering plot in southern Italy. Prosecutors in Salerno, south of Naples, have placed him under investigation for an alleged fraud involving à560 000 from an account he held at the Vatican’s bank, known officially as the Institute for Religious Works. He has denied the allegations, but was suspended from his Vatican job last month.

“They called him Monsignor 500 because of his penchant for opening his wallet and showing that he carried only à500 notes,” said Corriere della Sera, an Italy daily newspaper.

Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman, said the Holy See would fully cooperate with Italian authorities in their investigation of the alleged plot.

The Vatican bank, described by Forbes as “the most secret bank in the world”, has been plagued by scandals for years, including allegations of moneylaundering. It was the majority shareholder in the Banco Ambrosiano, an Italian bank that collapsed in 1982 with huge losses.

Its chairman, Roberto Calvi, who was nicknamed “God’s Banker”, was found hanged beneath Blackfriars Bridge in London. His death was initially treated as suicide, but the suspicion is that he was murdered, possibly by Mafia mobsters chasing money owed to them.

Pope Francis has made reforming the bank one of the priorities of the first few months of his pontificate. Earlier this month he appointed a trusted prelate, Battista Mario Salvatore Ricca, to oversee the bank’s management.

Founded in 1942, the bank does not lend money, but it manages major assets in about 19 000 accounts held by Vatican departments, Catholic charities and priests and nuns around the world. — © The Daily Telegraph, London