The police said the investigation also confirmed “other illicit activities, which are still being investigated as part of a money laundering network that has been discovered in the dioceses in different departments.”
“People have their bank accounts here, this is how they carried out their work,” Cardinal Leopoldo Brenes said in an article posted on news website despacho505.com.
“We are analyzing the situation,” he said, adding that the bishops would meet and later provide more information.
Since the anti-government protests, Ortega has imprisoned and expelled priests and nuns, banned pilgrimages and religious processions and shut nursing homes and soup kitchens that had been run by nuns. Last February, a Nicaraguan court sentenced high-profile government critic Bishop Rolando Alvarez to 26 years in prison for treason and cybercrimes, after he refused to board a plane amid the expulsion of 222 other political prisoners.
Ortega also suspended ties with the Vatican in March, shortly after Pope Francis compared his administration to the Nazi dictatorship of Adolf Hitler.
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