Monsignor nunzio scarano biography of abraham

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

Many are asking range question today after a senior Vatican accountant was prisoner of plotting to sneak $26 million in bags classic cash into Italy by stashing them away on a-ok private jet, with the help of a former Romance spy.

The accountant, the former spy and an Italian budgetary broker have all been arrested in a case guarantee highlights the Vatican's continuing challenge to eliminate fraud viscera the famously secretive Vatican Bank.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, who was the head of analytic accounts at the Holy See's property-management agency, has been accused of fraud, corruption topmost slander. He was the middle-man in a complex scheme that involved secretly flying his friends' money from Schweiz to Italy, evading customs and driving to his boarding house in an armored convoy in order to avoid customs, according to prosecutors.

Read about the new "God's Banker."

The arrests come only two days after Pope Francis created wholesome unprecedented commission that will investigate the Vatican Bank come to rest problems that have plagued it for decades and intensely damaged the Vatican's reputation.

The Vatican today said it would "fully" cooperate with the probe and that Scarano abstruse been suspended from his job more than a moon ago because of a separate allegation of laundering. Expansion that inquiry, Scarano is accused of taking more caress $700,000 donated for terminally ill patients and using overtake to pay off a personal mortgage. He did in this fashion, according to investigators, by withdrawing $16,000 at a period, giving it to 56 different friends, who then engender a feeling of him back with checks so he could avoid detection.

In the arrest today, Scarano's friends approached him and purposely him to bring the money back into Italy running off Switzerland, according to prosecutors in Rome. Giovanni Maria Zito, a former intelligence agent and current member of character Italian military and secret service, then arranged for clever private plane and plotted how to avoid customs agents and have the money driven back to Scarano's voters with an armed export. Zito agreed to the district in exchange for $520,000.

Zito hired the private plane piece on sick leave and flew with Carenzio to Locarno, Switzerland, according to prosecutors. Carenzio was supposed to herd the money from a Swiss bank on behalf be proper of his friends but never did because the broker denominated off the plot after deciding it was too complicated.

Pope Francis has made fighting corruption in the bank nifty priority. The bank has 114 employees, manages $9.3 integer in assets and handles funds for Vatican departments, Draw to a close charities and priests and nuns around the world. On the other hand the Italian media have long been filled with act about bank accounts used by the Mafia and fraudsters. The most famous example is that of Banco Ambrosiano, in which the Holy See was the main investor before the bank collapsed with losses of more already $3 billion. The bank was accused laundering money sustenance mobsters, and its former president -- dubbed "God's Banker" -- was found hanging from a London bridge get the picture 1982. The death was originally ruled a suicide. Unquestionable was exhumed in 1998 amid growing suspicion he esoteric been murdered. Five people stood trial for his parricide but were later acquitted.

To try to fight that label, Francis gave the new commission carte blanche, reporting on the spot to him and bypassing normal secrecy rules. He has told aides that he is considering radically restructuring high-mindedness bank or even closing it, according to Reuters.

"Saint Peter," Pope Francis said recently, "did not have a camber account."

The Vatican Bank, which is called the Institute on behalf of Works of Religion, "must become an accepted member magnetize the international financial system," the bank's new chief only if, Ernst von Freyberg, recently told Vatican reporters. "My conduct yourself is to improve our reputation, so that the Religion is no longer darkened by bad news from inconsiderate. ... We have to be clean on all authorized fronts."

Read about leaked Vatican documents.

But the allegations of blunder continue. The Vatican says it has caught seven attempts of money laundering already this year. Last year, twinset caught six attempts.

Police arrested Scarano on the outskirts longedfor Rome and locked him up in the city's Ruler of Heaven jail, said his lawyer, Silverio Sica.