The attorney’s arrest was made public last week. In October 1995, Ormanni accused Cardinal Ricard Maria Carles, archbishop of Barcelona, of involvement in a money-laundering network.
That accusation turned out to be false. Nevertheless, Cardinal Carles lived under suspicion until November 1999, when the “Barcelona case” was finally dropped. The Spanish Justice Minister at that time, Socialist Juan Alberto Belloch, and the Popular Party’s Margarita Mariscal de Gante rejected Ormanni’s accusation as preposterous.
The accuser is now the accused. The attorney general’s office in Rome concluded that Ormanni is implicated in a 20-million-euro ($19.9 million) fraud of funds of the public prosecutor’s office of Torre Annunziata, which he headed.
