Vatican bank cooperating with Italian probe
Vatican official arrested in alleged plot to bring 20M euro into Italy
An undated photo of Monsignor Nunzio Scarano in Salerno, Italy. A Vatican official already under investigation in a purported money-laundering plot involving the Vatican bank was arrested Friday, June 28, 2013, in a separate operation: Prosecutors allege he tried to bring 20 million euros ($26 million) in cash into Italy from Switzerland aboard an Italian government plane, his lawyer said. Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, a recently suspended accountant in one of the Vatican's main financial departments, is accused of fraud, corruption and slander stemming from the plot, which never got off the ground, attorney Silverio Sica told The Associated Press. He said Scarano was a middleman in the operation: Friends had asked him to intervene with a broker, Giovanni Carenzio, to return 20 million euros they had given him to invest. Sica said Scarano persuaded Carenzio to return the money, and an Italian secret service agent, Giovanni Maria Zito, went to Switzerland to bring the cash back aboard an Italian government aircraft. Such a move would presumably prevent any reporting of the money coming into Italy. The operation failed because Carenzio reneged on the deal, Sica said. (AP Photo/Francesco Pecoraro)
VATICAN CITY (AP) -- The troubled Vatican bank says it is cooperating with Italian investigators who arrested a Vatican official over an alleged plot to bring 20 million euros ($26 million) into Italy from Switzerland illegally.
Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, a recently suspended accountant in one of the Vatican's main finance departments, was arrested early Friday along with a secret service agent and a financier.
Vatican bank spokesman Max Hohenberg said the bank was cooperating and that its board had launched an internal investigation.
