The ruination of Michel Sindona, a powerful Italian financier with underworld connections, is chronicled in this historical drama. The tale begins in 1974 after Sindona's banking empire has just collapsed. The state sends in Milanese attorney Giorgio Ambrosoli to supervise the official receivership of Sindona's personal bank. Following the bank's destruction, Sindona high-tailed it to New York, but he still has the lawyer's every move watched. The surveillance is a routine precaution and Sindona isn't too worried about Ambrosoli, whom he sees as just another ineffectual, corruptible bureaucrat, an annoyance, but no real threat to the rest of Sindona's empire. Ambrosoli investigates deeper, and discovers that Sindona is connected to not only, the Mafia, but also the Parliament and to the Vatican. He then becomes a real threat by assuming control of the criminal mastermind's European holdings. While stepping up his investigations, Ambrosoli pays no mind to the ominous hints from the government that he should stop. Thanks to Ambrosoli, Sindona's credibility is severely damaged; meanwhile the lawyer begins receiving anonymous death threats (the actual taped threats are used for added realism). Eventually, Sindona has enough and puts a contract out on Ambrosoli, who was killed in 1979.