The Vatican Bank scandal is spreading.
Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, a former top Vatican accountant now on trial for an alleged plot to smuggle 20 million euros from Switzerland into Italy, was further charged on Tuesday with laundering millions through the Vatican bank, his lawyer said.
Scarano has been under house arrest in his native Salerno in southern Italy as part of the money smuggling trial that began on Dec. 3. The new charge pertains to suspected laundering via his accounts at the Vatican bank, lawyer Silverio Sica told Reuters.
The new charge comes just days after Pope Francis sacked nearly all the cardinals from the commission charged with overseeing the scandal-hit Vatican Bank.
Police said Scarano and two other people served with arrest warrants on Tuesday were suspected of laundering and making false statements. Sica said one of the arrested was a priest friend of Scarano, who was suspended from his job at the Vatican last year.
- Reuters
