BY JIM WYSS
  Special to The Herald

  MANAGUA - Less than 24 hours after being accused of stealing almost $100 million from government accounts during his five-year administration, former Nicaraguan President Arnoldo Alemán came out swinging Thursday. He alleged that much of the money went toward supplementing government salaries and financing the campaign that brought President Enrique Bolaños to power.

  Speaking to a gathering of Liberal Party supporters, Alemán said that during the period that Bolaños served as his vice president, he was given a ''stipend'' of $7,500 per month, aside from his regular salary. He also said the vice president's office was issued more than $2 million to cover expenses.

  Bolaños' camp denies any wrongdoing. Vice President José Rizo characterized Alemán's claims as the ravings of a politically desperate and isolated man and said that it was standard practice for officials to receive ''complementary'' dollar-based salaries.

  Alemán, who now heads the National Assembly and is protected from the charges by parliamentary immunity, claims his former ally is attacking the system that helped bring him to power and trying to divert attention from a failing economy.

  ''Don Enrique is using the anticorruption campaign to hide his inability to govern and his failure to come up with solutions for the great economic and social problems that are affecting the country's poorest,'' Alemán said. ``You are dragging this country into chaos.''

  The counterattack came after Attorney General Francisco Fiallos presented a formal indictment against Alemán and 13 others -- including three Alemán family members who live in the United States and the former head of Nicaragua's Internal Revenue Department, Byron Jerez -- for money laundering, misuse of public funds and fraud.

  Jerez, who is in jail on other corruption allegations, was a prominent Miami businessman and leader of the Nicaraguan exile community in the 1980s.

  During Wednesday's presentation, the government accused the group of embezzling about $99.4 million from state-owned companies, the National Treasury and Central Bank credit cards.

  According to the charges, the funds were paid out to dozens of phantom companies and offshore bank accounts. At the center of the laundering network, the
  government claims, was the Panamanian account of the Fundación Democrática Nicaraguense, or FDN, which was controlled by Alemán and his daughter,
  congresswoman María Dolores Alemán.

  It was with an FDN check that Alemán bought property worth $73,000 in Miami, Fiallos said.

  Alemán has maintained that the FDN account was the Liberal Party's campaign account, which helped finance Bolaños' 2001 bid that brought him to power over Daniel Ortega, the former president and head of the leftist Sandinista Party.

  Alemán did not address the property in Miami or allegations that he had run up $1.8 million in illicit credit card expenses.

  Responding to Alemán's claims, Bolaños said his campaign did not receive ''a single cent'' from the FDN.

  Despite the government's accusations and Bolaños' impassioned plea to Congress to strip Alemán of his immunity so he can face the charges in court, it's unclear
  whether there are any critical chinks in Alemán's powerful political machine. Assembly watchers point out that he has survived previous attempts to lift his immunity, and several of the key players in his Liberal Party took to the airwaves in his defense Thursday.

  While Alemán and his daughter are immune from prosecution, the indictment called for the arrest of the others, including Alemán's brother, Alvaro, and Alvaro's wife and son. Former Finance Minister Esteban Duque Estrada, and Jorge Solís, the former chief of Nicaragua's oil company, PETRONIC, are also sought but have fled the country. Alemán's sister, also named in the indictment, is reported to be under house arrest.