Google – AFP, Dario Thuburn (AFP), 21 January 2014
Rome — A
former Vatican accountant already under house arrest and on trial for alleged
corruption and attempted money laundering has been notified of fresh charges
against him, Italy's financial police said on Tuesday.
The police
said in a statement that they had seized Monsignor Nunzio Scarano's luxury
17-room apartment and blocked nearly 9.0 million euros ($12 million) on current
accounts linked to the senior Italian cleric.
The Vatican
in July last year said it had already frozen assets belonging to Scarano and
the police on Tuesday said these funds amounted to 2.2 million euros.
"This
is very significant," the police said in a statement, a reference to
unprecedented levels of cooperation between Vatican and Italian judicial
authorities on a high-profile financial crime case.
The
headquarters of the Institute for
Religious Works (IOR) in the Vatican,
on
February 18, 2012 (AFP/File,
Gabriel Bouys)
|
"This
investigation is based on information provided by the Vatican," he said.
The police
said a priest in Scarano's hometown of Salerno who was an aide to the
monsignor, Father Luigi Noli, has also been charged and put under house arrest.
A total of
52 people are being investigated in the case, including a notary who allegedly
helped organise the money laundering scheme and lawyers, doctors and
businesspeople who are suspected of making use of it.
Scarano is
accused of taking cheques marked "Donation for the Poor" and in
return giving cash from accounts at the Vatican bank, officially known as the
Institute of Religious Works or IOR under its Italian acronym.
The police
said they had seized two bank accounts at a branch near the Vatican of Italy's
UniCredit, one in Scarano's name and the other belonging to a company in which
the prelate held 99 percent of shares.
One of the
cash withdrawals made by Scarano and traced by police was for 588,248 euros and
the police said he gave it to 50 people and used it to pay back a mortgage.
They said
they managed to find at least five million euros that Scarano "had at his
disposal" and alleged he made extensive property investments in Salerno.
The
prelate's lawyer, Silverio Sica, said his client used the money for charity and
could not be responsible for the provenance of donations he received.
"These
are donations we received over the years from wealthy people. They are free
donations. It is not up to us to say where the money came from," he told
AFP.
Silverio
Sica said the latest accusations had been a "blow" for Scarano and
that he had requested that a psychiatrist be allowed to visit him, adding:
"He is completely in shock, he is very disoriented."
The police
said their suspicions were first aroused in January 2013 when Scarano reported
a theft from his home of "several million euros' worth of valuables".
They said
the sum was "significantly disproportionate" to Scarano's declared
income.
Scarano was
arrested in June of last year on suspicion of being an intermediary for suspect
payments from Monaco to Italy, carried out through the Vatican bank.
The
clergyman has since been suspended from his duties as chief accountant for
APSA, the organisation that manages the Vatican's vast real estate portfolio.
Investigators
said Scarano used IOR accounts to make transfers to friends and attempted to
repatriate from Switzerland 20 million euros that were untaxed, on behalf of a
family of ship owners from Naples.
Scarano's
trial started in December last year.
The
Vatican, the world's smallest sovereign state, has launched a series of reforms
aimed at bringing its bank into line with international standards against money
laundering.
The bank
has been plagued by scandals in the past and its former president, Paul
Marcinkus, sheltered in the Vatican for years to fight off repeated attempts by
Italian judicial authorities to arrest him in the 1980s.
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