Vatican investigating priest's bank account over potential mafia links

Vatican City, June 11 (ANI): The Vatican Bank has been asked to disclose details of an account held by a priest in connection with a money laundering and fraud investigation, according to a report.

The official request by anti-mafia prosecutors was made over a month ago, but so far the Vatican Bank, called the Institute for Religious Works, refused to disclose any records of the account held by Father Ninni Treppiedi.

Treppiedi is currently suspended from serving as a priest.

According to The Telegraph, investigators want to know more about vast sums of money that are said to have passed through his account to establish if they were money laundering operations by on the run Mafia Godfather, Matteo Messina Denaro.

The reports came just two weeks after the head of the Vatican Bank, Ettore Gotti Tedeschi, was sacked amid claims of power struggles and corruption within the Holy See, which have been linked to the leaking of sensitive documents belonging to Pope Benedict XVI.

Father Treppiedi, 36, was serving as a priest in Alcamo, near Trapani, said to be the richest parish in the mafia island stronghold of Sicily.

He was suspended after a series of questionable transactions of church funds.

According to the paper, prosecutors are particularly looking at financial transactions made through Father Treppiedi's account at the Vatican Bank between 2007 and 2009 and which came to almost one million euros, but paperwork explaining the source of the money is said to be missing. (ANI)