Vatican cleric arrested in €20m smuggling case

A senior Catholic cleric with connections to the Vatican bank was arrested for plotting to help rich friends smuggle tens of millions of euro in cash into Italy from Switzerland, in the latest blow to the Vatican’s image.

Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, 61, who worked as a senior accountant in the Vatican’s financial administration, was arrested along with an Italian secret service agent and a financial intermediary in a tale that reads like a spy novel.

It involves police wiretaps, a private plane rented to collect the cash from Locarno, burned mobile phones, an allegedly corrupt secret services agent who promised to get the money past customs and a shady financier.