Scarano trial, the charges also hold up on appeal but the judges serve him one year and nine months

Discount on appeal for Monsignor Nunzio Scarano and his accountant Tiziana Cascone. The charge of money laundering remained standing, the judges of second instance (president Patrizia Cappiello) they condemned the Salerno prelate (defended bylawyer Riziero Angeletti) to 5 years and 3 months of imprisonment and a 5 thousand euro fine instead of the 7 years and 7 thousand euro fine imposed in the first instance and the professional from Salerno (defended by lawyers Carmine Giovine and Agostino De Caro) to 2 years and 5 months and a fine of 3,200 euros (in the first instance 3 years and 6 months and a fine of 4 thousand euros) with the revocation – for Cascone – of the additional sentence imposed in the first instance (the ban on carrying out public activities) . Having confirmed the rest of the first instance sentence, the judges of the Court of Appeal of Salerno reserved 90 days to file the motivation. And, therefore, understand whether the third degree of judgment will be used or the sentence will become executory.

THE STORY

The affair concerned the extinction of a mortgage on an apartment that Scarano (formerly responsible for the accounting office of Aspa, the administration of the assets of the apostolic see) had given as guarantee: according to the accusations, the mortgage would have been extinguished with fake donations from third parties and with checks for 10 thousand euros then reimbursed in cash to cover a large money laundering. In particular, the round of checks, passing in the form of donations, would have been part of the money laundering operation (limited, as the judges of the second criminal section specified, to the sum of two million and 400 thousand euros) as Monsignor Scarano would have been aware of the origin illicit of the sums of money received. And the two defendants were the main protagonists of the investigation by the Salerno prosecutor’s office (pm Elena Guarino) culminated in a maxi-trial which ended with the conviction of Scarano and Cascone and the acquittal of all the other defendants (about fifty who, probably without their knowledge, participated in the mortgage repayment operation).

Last January the Prosecutor had asked the judges of the Court of Appeal of Salerno to confirm the first instance sentence (March 2022) for both defendants and then there were the defense lawyers’ arguments on the non-existence of the crime of money laundering.

The judges of second instance, with the sentence issued yesterday afternoon, confirmed the accusatory hypothesis but reduced the sentences: now it will be necessary to read the reasons (in ninety days) to understand the reasoning behind the counting of the two sentences in addition to the hypothesis of crime which it also held up in the second degree of judgment although the sentences inflicted were reduced by one year and one month for the accountant Cascone and by one year and seven months for the prelate Scarano. We remind you that the investigation, started in 2013, led the Salerno prosecutor’s office to ascertain alleged false donations coming from offshore companies of the D’Amico shipowners passed through the IOR accounts (the Vatican financial institution for religious works) registered in Scarano and, according to prosecutor Elena Guarino who coordinated the investigation, the donations would have been used to cover a large money laundering. Before taking his vows, Don Nunzio Scarano was a bank official and then, once he entered the Vatican, he was employed in the real estate sector‘Apsaan organization with thousands of valuable properties and deposits worth hundreds of millions of euros.

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