Two top officials of the Vatican bank resigned Monday just days after a senior cleric with ties to the institution was arrested after police caught him with the equivalent of about $26 million in cash that they say he was trying to bring into Italy from Switzerland.
Paolo Cipriani, the bank's director, and his deputy, Massimo Tulli, stepped down, the Vatican said in a statement [h/t National Catholic Reporter]. Ernst von Freyberg, the bank's president, will take over as interim director general.
The resignations are the latest blow to the Vatican bank, which has been plagued by concerns it's used as an offshore tax haven. Last week Monsignor Nunzio Scarano, 61, who was already under investigation for money laundering, was arrested along with two other men.
The Associated Press reports:
"In addition to his Rome arrest, Scarano is also under investigation in the southern city of Salerno for alleged money-laundering stemming from a 560,000 euro cash withdrawal he made from his IOR charity account in 2009. Sica, the attorney, has said Scarano arranged complicated transactions with dozens of other people and eventually used the money to pay off a mortgage."