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A Priest, A Banker And A Spook Walk Into The Vatican's Money-Laundering Rabbit Hole...
A priest, a banker and a spook… not the start of a joke or a John LeCarre spy novel, but merely the latest addition to a long list of financial scandals involving the Vatican Bank. Yet despite its quasi comedian if convoluted plotline, the latest attempt to defraud the Catholic church will likely pale in comparison to the most infamous incident involving the Institute of Religious Works (or IOR) as the Vatican Bank is also known. That one involves one Roberto Calvi, the chairman of Banco Ambrosiano, who in 1982 was found hanging from London’s Blackfriars bridge, a short distance away from JPMorgan’s gold vault, his pockets stuffed will cash and bricks in what at the time was a presumed hit by the mafia taking revenge for funds lost through the collapse of Calvi’s bank – a bank in which the Vatican was a significant shareholder.
That particular murder will likely remain unsolved, and the question whether the Vatican uses the mob as its tool of “retribution and righteous punishment” will remain unanswered, as the man who stonewalled the Vatican’s response at the time on the grounds of sovereign immunity: the US archbishop Paul Marcinkus who was then-head of the Vatican Bank, took his secrets to the grave with him in 2006.
This time, however, with plenty of living loose ends, we may finally get a glimpse into how deep the rabbit hole involving the legal, and more importantly illegal, (ab)use of Catholic funds really goes.
Fast forward to today when we learn courtesy of the FT that the priest involved in the developing financial scandal is one Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, 61, a banker-turned priest, who was ordained at the age of 35 after working for many years at the Banca d’America e d’Italia, a Naples-based lender which was acquired in the late 1980’s by Deutsche Bank. His Vatican career began in the financial wing of the Holy See, or Apsa, where he worked his way up to a senior post in the organization’s analytical accounting division. He had been recently suspended once the Vatican learned he was under investigation for alleged money laundering.
Scarano is said to have had two bank accounts in the Vatican Bank: a personal one and another one under the name of a charity for the elderly. He is also the owner of a luxury flat in the city center and has a majority stake in a construction company set up in 2012.
According to court documents Scarano’s money-launder network started in 2009, comprising of 60 local businessmen, and that his nickname in assorted circles, was “Monsignor 500” in reference to the large euro notes he carried with him.
In short, Scarano is the “priest” of abovementioned spy novel trio. Scarano collaborated with Giovanni Mario Zito, a former agent who is now a Carabinieri police officer and on loan to the Italian secret services aka, “the spook”, and Giovani Carenzo, a financial broker with offices in Switzerland and the Canary Islands, or the “banker”, to hatch a plot to bring some $52 million from a Swiss bank account for a family of shipbuilders in Scarano’s home town of Salerno, [located in Cosa Nostra’s favorite Sicily].
According to magistrate Nello Rossi, in July 2012 Scarano engaged the “spook” to help him get the money, held in a Swiss bank, into Italy without tax and customs controls. The “banker” was acting as a fiduciary for the owners of the money. Money, which at least for now, is unclear how it got into Switzerland in the first place.
As Reuters reports, “The three originally planned to bring back 40 million euros in cash but later reduced it to 20 million euros. A private plane went to Locarno from Rome and waited several days before returning to Rome without the money. The cash never left Switzerland because of disagreements and nervousness among the three, Rossi said, adding that cell phones that were used were later destroyed by being burned. Zito had promised to use his position in the secret services to avoid customs controls. The plane was to have been met on the runway of a Rome airport and the cash taken under armed escort to Scarano's home in Rome, Rossi said, calling the plot "intricately planned".”
It gets better: “Even though the money never left the Swiss bank, Zito, who is now in a military prison, demanded the payment he had been promised for his services.
Scarano gave Zito two checks, one for 400,000 euros and another for 200,000 euros. Zito cashed the first check but Scarano blocked the second before Zito could cash it by filing a false report that it had been lost.”
This is not the priest’s first transgression. In fact, He was suspended from his duties several weeks ago when he was placed under investigation by magistrates in Salerno. “In that investigation, his lawyer Silverio Sica said wealthy friends had donated money to Scarano in order for him to build a home for the terminally ill. According to Sica, his client wanted to use that money to pay off his mortgage so he could sell a property in Salerno and use the proceeds to build the care home. Apparently to cover his tracks, Scarano has been accused of taking 560,000 euros in cash out of his account in the Vatican bank and giving various amounts to friends who gave him checks in exchange. He then deposited the checks into an Italian bank account to pay off the mortgage.”
So a current priest an former banker stealing money which was at least on paper supposed to go to a home for the terminally ill… Sounds about right for the New Normal.
In conclusion: “Rossi said his office would seek permission from the Vatican, which is a sovereign state, to question officials. "This is just a piece in a much larger mosaic," he said.
Of course, the question now is just how honest the new pope Francis was when he vowed to simplify and reform any shady dealings in the Vatican: because not even he likely has any idea just how deep this particular rabbit hole goes… or what will be revealed when the latest criminal thriller involving a priest, a banker and a spook reaches its climax.
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Pope Francis says: "You just made the list buddy"
Pope John Paul I lasted, what, about 35 days? Pope Francis may want to avoid bath tubs, pools, and food & drink provided by others.
"Come here little boy...I have a sucker for you"
I promise the most open and transparent Papacy in history...
Beautiful. Christ once threw the bankers out of the temple and today we have the church embracing not only them but also the institution of banking itself.
Either the rank and file of the Catholic must rise up or else the Catholic Church will become largely irrelevant.
Let's play 'hangman'... "The Gospels of the Bible were written by:"
~~~
|/ || (_)
| \|/
| |
| / \
|
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
_ _ _ _
LOL
CH S POP S
Where's definite non-___ Vana White, I'd like to solve the puzzle.
A ceramic dalmation for you & your family to enjoy!
Francis, to complete the picture, you can not leave out the editor - Justinian - head of state at the time. Some of it was likely massaged. Some gospels were excluded like
gnosis.org/naghamm/nhlintro.html
It was on a December day in the year of 1945, near the town of Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt, that the course of Gnostic studies was radically renewed and forever changed. An Arab peasant, digging around a boulder in search of fertilizer for his fields, happened upon an old, rather large red earthenware jar. Hoping to have found a buried treasure, and with due hesitation and apprehension about the jinn who might attend such a hoard, he smashed the jar open. Inside he discovered no treasure and no genie, but instead books: more than a dozen old codices bound in golden brown leather.6 Little did he realize that he had found an extraordinary collection of ancient texts, manuscripts hidden a millennium and a half before -- probably by monks from the nearby monastery of St. Pachomius seeking to preserve them from a destruction ordered by the church as part of its violent expunging of heterodoxy and heresy.
Another
http://www.gospelofthomas.info/essays/discovery.html
Robert Anton Wilson on the Vatican Bank scandal:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q54xeCVFg8I
Wow - $ scandals in the Catholic Church- as old as the Church itself. ZH is turning into the MSM in its love of bashing the Catholic Church.
Read more carefully: "the latest attempt to defraud the Catholic church"
The title and the first sentence read differently to me.
The Vatican isn't the Catholic Church (just like Washington DC isn't the United States)
yawn- the vatican will survive for thousands more years while the US will soon be relegated to the dustbin of history.
True (probably), but entirely irrelevant. My point was that criticizing the Vatican for being involved in a scandal isn't necessarily to criticize the Catholic Church, just like saying that Washington DC is full of corruption and fraud isn't necessarily to criticize the United States.
I emphatically disagree, and would love to hear your theory of causation.
It's really not that difficult a concept, and certainly not one which requires any talk of my "theory of causation." The Catholic Church is approximately 1 billion people spread throughout the world; the Vatican is a small city-state where the Church's bureaucracy is located. So to say that the bureaucracy is embroiled in scandal is not to indict the 1 billion people.
Fifty years from now Catholics will believe that there is no god...,
and that Mary is his mother.
And that she was gay, studying 15th century lesbian poetry.
Yeah yeah, time dilation but what the fuck, eh?
A Nun, Priest, and Lawyer were transporting a ship load of orphans across the ocean. The boat began to sink...
The Nun cried out, "We have to save the children"!
The Lawyer yelled out, "Fuck the children"!
The Priest asked, "Do we still have time for that"?
lol
Haha... A "spook" in Canada certainly has a "darker" meaning.
If you startled Paula Dean, would she be willing to admit she was "spooked"?
With all the data mining (for revenue confiscation) the NSA and FBI are up too, I'm sure they have phone records, emails and voice recordings they can work from, no one is safe in this day and age!
Word has it from the NSA that Roberto Calvi just took his second crap today due to a number of jalapenos he had for lunch.
This is a very fair and well written article. It does not bash Catholicism whatsoever. I will be very, very interested to see how this plays out. Will it be 'disappeared'? Probably. But if that is the case and we continue to see more evidence of action taking place 'behind the scenes' then quite possibly Pope Francis is a more credible Vicar of Christ than so many of his predecessors?
The thing is you can't really do any meaningful comparisons because they're all infallible. Even the Borge Popes. Even when there were 4 competing "Popes".
They are all the same. Created to control the masses. This is not to knock anyone's religion of any flavor.
The common thread is the human condition. Greed.
I guess this fellow forgot, "Blessed are the Meek...."
Blessed are the cheesemakers.
whats so special about cheesemakers?
I thi k he meant manufacturers of dairy products in general....
So I guess we see what god they all three REALLY worship.
LOL .. are the Film rights still available ? ... "God's Banksters" .
Which reminds me,
I was on my way to a job this morning real early, just driving along minding my own business, when this stupid cow an a BMW came hurtling past at about 90mph, as she passed, I could quite clearly see she was using the rear view mirror to apply her make up, taking no fucking notice of the road ahead.
Silly mare, I was so shocked, I dropped my cornflakes and cup of tea. Never seen nowt like it.
Idiots on the road nowerdays.
Ha ha that was funny( in a spooky way ).
LOL...yeah. Some of the best comedy there is makes one a little uncomfortable.....because you are coming too close to the truth.
On rear view mirrors ...an American friend once said to me:
"First thing I do when I buy a new car is rip out the rear view mirror"
I asked: "Why's that?"
He replied: "Because everything behind me is history. I'm going forward"
Reminds me of that old Italian I met a few years back,
He told me this story about their tanks in world war 2 having one forward gear and six reverse, as well as having rear view mirrors. I asked hows that?
He said, his words, its so we can see exactly whats going on in the war.
:-)
The one forward gear is in case they get attacked from the rear.
Or American made helicopters.... 100,000 loose parts, flying in close formation.
When you exfil out of one these Vietnam era aircraft, you'll notice hydraulic fluid pissing out of the lines, and your covered with the cherry colored fluid (that's good!!) because that means that there is still hydraulic fluid IN THE LINES!!!
What really amazed me...operating in Helmand, the British Task Force Helman only had 4 rotary wing aircraft!!!
Still amazes me how they were able to hold PB Argyle in the middle of Marjeh.
Yeah.... speaking of Viet Nam era helo's....The Bell AH-1 Cobra Attack helicopter....(now the Super Cobra with many more bells and whistles) was introduced in 1967. Still in use to this day....she is still the baddest ass helo out there. Sleek, skinny, (for crying out loud....looking top down most of her fuselage is covered by the main rotor blade).....and that sound from the 2 blade main rotor.....that CHOP CHOP CHOP....that you don't get from even those 4 blade Apaches (FUGgly creatures) much less those blender sounds coming from a 5 or 6 blade chopper.
She's like the F-16 of helicopters. I've seen a few at various airshows and military bases. Still never ceases to excite and strike fear in me.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_AH-1_Cobra
They were not tanks,just little Fiats for the Krauts.
A German panzer commander once commented; " 1 of our tanks is equal to 4 of the Americans', unfortunately the Americans travel in groups of 5"
On rear view mirrors ...an American friend once said to me:
Yeah....so ask your friend how he is going to see history sneaking up from the rear at a faster pace than he is going forward.
I'm not surprised it's an American friend. We Americans have perfected that phrase "I'm moving forward"....or "Time to move forward". Without pausing for proper introspection or retrospection you can't be properly circumspect. Which helps you in keeping the past from sneaking up on you again and having to have your eye constantly on the rear view mirror.
That is a line stolen from the film, "Gumball Rally".
Well, since it's the weekend and people are game for a bit of fun, here's a few ARAPROSKOKIANS to amuse you if you haven't seen them already:
1. Where there's a will, I want to be in it.
2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you, but it's still on my list.
3. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright
until you hear them speak.
4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.
5. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.
6. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it
in a fruit salad.
7. They begin the evening news with 'Good Evening,' then proceed to tell
you why it isn't.
8. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is
research.
9. In filling out a job application, where it says "In case of emergency,
notify:____" I put 'DOCTOR'.
10. I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.
11. Behind every successful man is his woman. Behind the fall of a
successful man is usually another woman.
12. You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute
to skydive twice.
13. There's a fine line between cuddling and holding someone down so
they can't get away.
14. I used to be indecisive. Now I'm not so sure.
15. You're never too old to learn something stupid.
16. To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you
hit the target.
17. Change is inevitable, except from a vending machine.
18. Going to church doesn't make you a Christian any more than standing
in a garage makes you a car.
19. Where there's a will, there are relatives.
I'm not as thnk as you stoned I am...
It's also possible it was an American friend because most English friends wouldn't have the sharpness-of-mind to think up such a witty remark.
News flash: America to ban rear-view mirrors and reverse gears in transmission, people only allowed to move FORWARD!
Good thing you weren't having a wank at the same time... or were you going for the threesome?... (cornflakes, tea, wank) with only two hands?
Cheers ya MixedNut. Good to see you out and about.
Yet another group of redistributionist fucks doing God's work.
"pope Francis was when he vowed to simplify and reform any shady dealings in the Vatican"
That's like satan promising to be good from now on. Give me a break. When those "popes" die they split hell wide open.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H5TyNPG88aU
Who says the Church is behind the times?? I guess they've decided it's no longer profitable to sell heaven with indulgences anymore, so they've now adapted to the banksters' playbook!
Well, you know, since the Catholic Church had (as did the Jewish Zionists as a matter of fact) some close and secret relations with the Nazis in Germany before/during WWII - this should not be surprising given that hardline religions are little more than religious fascists - perhaps the fraud going on now against it is nothing more than Nazi left-overs (now wearing expensive 3-piece suits and calling themselves "banksters") trying to get their money back to fund further development of the Fourth Reich, which Fuhrerin Merkel would secretly admit is very necessary to take control over the ClubMed welfare layabouts who are causing serious damage to the Fatherland's industrial empire.
Is this the outline of a new novel???
Salerno is not in Sicily, it's located at the gulf of Salerno, which is under Naples, resp. the costiera Amalfitana, one of the nicest places on Earth. Capri is a stonethrow near.
There is no level or segment of society that isn't trying to get what it can before the final reset, especially among the "elites" who have paid off willing politicians to ensure that the Rule of Law applies only to the 99%. Why would anyone think that the Catholic Church, or any organized religion, is exempt from this corruption?
He was taking 40mil to his house??
Then what, a party?
Speaking of hating Catholics, which seems endless on ZH, on Globalresearch they report that the Free Syria folks opposed to the evil dictator, Bashir el Assad, have just beheaded a Catholic priest.
Wasn't it an Orthodox bishop? Or is this another one? Isn't something how Obama pretends to be a Christian fighting a war on terror while sponsoring Christian killing al Qaeda terrorists? Maybe it's a war on Terra.
Killing Christians would be the operative words in my view as well. We'll assume Assad isn't sending suicide bombers against the Greek Orthodox ;-)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-23086213
Hahahhaha, are you implying Christians aren't up to killing Christians? Remind who fought every continental war in European history since the end of Rome............. Hahahhahahahahaaa.
Europeans have been prone to kill Europeans long before Christianity got there.
As far as that goes, Asians and Africans are pretty adept at killing one another to.
Reality is that man has a tendancy to kill man regardless of creed.
It is more politically acceptable to load up and go kill foreigners, but its cheaper and easier to kill neighbors.
Stranger stuff has been known to happen when a man gets no pussy.
The God I believe in , isn't short on money.
They should move the Vatican to Israel.
I think it was I-dog who said they turned over their finances to the Rothschild's in the 1820's.
I think I'm on the side of the Church and the Mafia versus the Government and the Bankers.
However, if that Priest was stealing money from Parishoners and the Poor Box he should be sent to a Leper Colony to clean sores.
Tyler, Salerno is on mainland Italy, not Sicily.
It feels like a 3 Stooges story and 52 million seems like pocket lint compared to the trillions to quadrillions in derivatives malfeasance and other large systemic scandals currently running.
Funniest thing I've ever seen by the Tyler(s), completely snarky, and I love the Dan Brown angle. I read ZH largely because they lampoon the "New Normal" and all the rampant corruption everywhere. Full disclosure: I'm Pastafarian, and the Popes are immoral. GOD DAMN! What a great site! Fire Angel
I think the terminally ill never seen a dollar..
Guess who is "Monsignor 100", yeah the American Version?
Calling Janet Tavakoli (Archangels). A mosaic indeed. The degree to which Francis wishes to clean house will be determined in a matter of days. Will the Vatican exert its sovereignty, or submit to the lesser authority of the state? Pray tell, Francis, pray tell.
White Rabbit...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WANNqr-vcx0
Vatican grifters getting grifted.
Irony.
"This time, however, with plenty of living loose ends, we may finally get a glimpse into how deep the rabbit hole involving the legal, and more importantly illegal, (ab)use of Catholic funds really goes."
Yeah, right... The good Friar's are covering shit as we bloggulate on learning the truth.
Or as my rashly incompetent ex-boss often reasoned, "Which Truth?" he would reveal if and when questioned.
They should have called it a bonus, that makes it legal.
The Jesuit’s via Black Pope will take down this plot. Mark my words!!
Others will tumble during the shockwave event!
Quite frankly, I told a friend I expected the new Pope to be found dead as soon as he said he was gonna look into the Vatican banking.
Is driving over the Alps with a full trunk that effin' difficult?
And laundering so badly botched even an East Philly bookie is laughing at them.
From the global central bankster vatican mafia cartel, BRILLIANT! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Sutherland ... there is no disconnect between the puppet master's eurogarchs or baksta trash just factions jockeying for position. FORWOARD FOURTH REICH.
To Hell with the Catholic Church. It has been corrupted beyond redemption. Jews and Nuns descended on my own local church a few years ago, subverted it, and then destroyed it. Within a year it broke completely apart with scandal after scandal, and the elders, trusting children that they are, were completely bamboozled as to what went wrong.
That rabbit hole goes all the way down to Hell; where the College of Cardinals keep their moral compass.
The Holier by my very Robes racket keeps working helping folks prevent thinking critically breaking out. Dogma indigestion is a leading cause of Hair on Fire.