A special prosecutor on Monday charged a top opposition leader, a newspaper publisher and 37 other people with fraud and influence trafficking.

Former presidential candidate Eduardo Montealegre and several other former government officials are among those accused of profiting from a US$500 million bank bailout eight years ago.

Special Prosecutor Armando Juarez turned the complaint over to a judge and told reporters that charges could lead to 10 years in prison.

Montealegre, who lost the 2006 presidential election to Daniel Ortega, said at a news conference that the charges are part of plan by Ortega’s Sandinista party “to install a dictatorship little by little.”

Montealegre, who is now running for mayor of Managua, was treasury minister and a member of the board of directors for the Nicaraguan Central Bank at the time of the bank crisis.

Also charged was Jaime Chamorro Cardenal, publisher of the newspaper La Prensa and brother-in-law of former President Violeta Chamorro. Ortega’s Sandinista government of the 1980s forced the closure of La Prensa from 1986 to 1987, prompting international protests.

Chamorro was on the board of one of the banks involved in the scandal.