Pope’s accountant charged with using Vatican bank to launder millions in 'false donations'

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, 61, is already on trial for an alleged plot to smuggle £17million into Italy.

The former senior accountant was suspended from his job at the Vatican after working there for more than 22 years.

He and two other people were served with arrest warrants today on suspicion of money laundering and making false statements. Fifty-two others were being investigated.

The charges are a fresh blow to Pope Francis who has vowed to make Church finances meet international standards of transparency.

The Pope has not ruled out closing the bank if it cannot be reformed.

Scarano is under house arrest in his native Salerno, near Naples.

He is on trial in Rome for conspiring to smuggle €20million out of Switzerland along with a financier and a former secret services officer for rich shipbuilder friends in Salerno.

The new charge, which came after a separate, year-long investigation, concerns suspected money laundering through his accounts at the Vatican bank, officially known as the Institute for Works of Religion (IOR).

A police statement said millions of euros in “false donations” from offshore companies moved through Scarano’s accounts there.

Police did not say exactly how much laundered money had moved through the IOR but said Scarano had about €5million at his disposal in accounts at the Vatican and other Italian banks.

Police have frozen two accounts in an Italian bank just outside the Vatican, one for a real estate company he controlled.

They also seized two apartments, as part of around €6.5million in financial and real estate assets. Last July, the Vatican bank froze more than €2million in about 10 accounts Scarano kept there. TRUNews