Two nuns were arrested and a
request to arrest a Senator filed Wednesday over the fraudulent
bankruptcy of a southern Italian nursing-home chain called
Divine Providence.
The case highlighted the progress made by the Vatican Bank
towards full transparency of its formerly opaque affairs,
investigators said.
"The IOR's collaboration was precious," prosecutors told
reporters.
An arrest warrant was issued for the Senator from the
conservative New Centre Right-Popular Area (NCD-AP) party,
Antonio Azzolini, on charges of involvement in the fake crash.
A request for Azzolini's immunity to be lifted already has
been presented to parliament, judicial sources said.
"From today I'm the one in charge here," Azzolini is heard
saying in a wiretap obtained in the case, when he allegedly took
over running the chain.
Azzolini's "reign of terror", investigators said, was
marked by a spate of "wild and totally indiscriminate hirings of
chain staff linked to him".
He was also prone to "vulgar intimidation of the sisters,"
they said.
Azzolini denied making the statements published in the
wiretaps.
The two nuns arrested in the probe in Puglia are among the
most senior members of the Ancelle Congregation of Divine
Providence, the religious order running a series of nursing
homes at the heart of the 500 million euro bankruptcy.
Also arrested are a former director general, administrators
and consultants of the order. In all as many as 25 people are
under investigation on charges of bilking funds from the
foundation.
Established to give a voice to the voiceless by helping old
people unable to look after themselves, the religious order
"seems to have completely reneged on its founding canons," a
statement by the prosecutor's office in Bari said.
Information provided by the
Investigatoirs said the Institute for Religious Works
(IOR), the Vatican Bank, allowed investigators to "close the
circle" in their probe.
Replies supplied by the Holy See bankers allowed
investigators in Puglia to undertake "a more pregnant technical
examination" of financial flows through bank account data in
which assets of the Congregation of Divine Providence had been
hidden, judicial sources said.
Meanwhile it was disclosed that a Socialist MP, Raffaele
Di Gioia, also is among those under investigation in the probe
which appeared to be widening.
Finance police confiscated 32 million euros and a building
that the nuns were planning to turn into a private clinic in
Guidonia in Rome province.
The money and the building were held in the names of
parallel church orders run by nuns from the Divine Providence
congregation.
As much as 350 million euros of the total debts of half a
billion euros run up by the congregation were debts to the
Italian state.
The order also had a secret bank account in which
donations from the faithful were stashed.
Part of the money was used to finance a campaign for the
beatification by the Church of the founder of the order, Don
Uva, the sources said.
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