Court documents show that Vatican Bank deliberately flouted anti-laundering laws "with the aim of hiding the ownership, destination and origin of the capital".
The documents also reveal that clergy acted as fronts for corrupt businessmen and Mafia.
The financial impropriety could not come at a worse time for the Vatican, already hit by revelations that it sheltered paedophile priests.
The corruption probe has given new hope to Holocaust survivors who tried unsuccessfully to sue in the United States, alleging that Nazi loot was stored in the Vatican Bank.
In 1986, a Vatican financial adviser died after drinking cyanide-laced coffee in prison. Another, Roberto Calvi, was found dangling from a rope under London's Blackfriars Bridge in 1982.
WHO WILL BELIEVE THE VATICAN NOT CONNECTED WITH MAFIA
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