Tomasso Di Ruzza, the director of the Vatican’s Financial Intelligence Authority, has reportedly been detained after a police raid on the regulatory body's offices.

The internal investigation of suspicious financial transactions has, according to an exclusive in the national daily L'Espresso, resulted in five executives being suspended from their posts. Among them are Don Mauro Carlino, the head of the offices of the Secretariat of State, as well as Di Ruzza himself.

An anonymous Vatican source told the Sydney Morning Herald that the raid "concerned efforts by the secretariat of state to sanitise a botched, money-losing real estate deal in London that originated during the previous pontificate." L'Espresso added that the police were looking at the accounts of the Obolo di San Pietro (Peter's Pence, an offer of money made by the faithful and sent to Papa Francesco to be redistributed to the church and to charity).