“The tip of the iceberg” of Ortega’s confiscations in Nicaragua: more than 250 million dollars in properties In Mexico and Central America the word piñata is generally associated with parties and celebrations. The exception is Nicaragua where, since 1990, after the defeat of the Sandinista Revolution at the polls, to say “the piñata” is to evoke a feared specter: that of property confiscations. Before handing over power to former president Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, the Sandinista nomenclature shared a large amount of real estate and public property, including the house where Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo currently live. It was a blow that generated a debt of 2,000 million dollars for the Nicaraguan State, a sum that would have had to be paid in 2023.
However, before the “pinata” debt was settled, Ortega once again generated another debt to Nicaragua with a new stage of confiscations, initiated after the 2018 protests as part of his repressive strategy against anyone who oppose the regime. According to an investigation by the Pro Transparency and Anticorruption Observatory (OPTA), of the organization Let’s Democracy, to date the ruling party has confiscated 135 properties with a value that amounts to 250 million dollars.
This estimate, however, “is the tip of the iceberg of the new Ortega-Murillo piñata,” the document highlights. “This investigation does not amount to a definitive quantification of what was confiscated by the Ortega-Murillos as of 2018, but is only a first effort to document what was illegally confiscated by the regime,” the work indicates. “Quantifying the new confiscations is complex due to many factors: the information available is zero and the terror that prevails in Nicaragua due to repression makes it extremely difficult for victims to feel safe in sharing information.”
After the Ortega-Murillos broke up the protests against their Government with lethal violence in 2018, one of the repressive flanks they opened was the expropriation of properties, despite the fact that article 44 of the Political Constitution of Nicaragua categorically prohibits “the confiscation of goods.” A vain attempt to avoid what is already repeated: the confiscation of opponents in their capacity as citizens, large businessmen, private sector unions, small and medium-sized businesses; non-governmental organizations, media, universities, the Catholic Church and even diplomatic headquarters.
Critical businessmen hit
Although the Ortega-Murillos were already carrying out de facto confiscations after 2018, it was in February 2023 when the Sandinista Parliament approved a reform to article 20 of the Magna Carta, which established that every Nicaraguan declared as a “traitor to the country” will be “He will strip his nationality” and his “assets will pass into the name of the State.” To date, 317 citizens have been denationalized and victims of confiscations, but the regime has gradually consummated the illegal seizure of property. They have started with the highest value properties and those located in areas of high capital gains.
However, confiscations have also been extended to people who have not been denationalized, such as businessman Piero Coen Ubilla. The businessman was stripped of several properties, including the Old Santo Domingo residential and office complex, whose total value is around $100 million.
In addition, businessmen have also been confiscated in a union manner: until April 2024, 35 business chambers and associations were canceled by the regime. The OPTA investigation reveals that the Government has not only gone after the businessmen’s properties, but has also taken over the shares that the employers’ chambers had in other businesses.
“In other words, when the legal status of a chamber or a business association is dissolved by the Government, all the shares they have – in any company, enterprise or society – become property of the State of Nicaragua. In the absence of information available on this matter for security reasons, it is very difficult to quantify the impact. However, private sector sources speak of a very high and critical scope,” the study warns.
The clearest precedent for the appropriation of shares is that of the Spanish group TSK Melfosur. In December 2020, through an “extraordinary” approval of a Law on Sovereign Assurance and Guarantee of the Supply of Electricity to the Nicaraguan Population, the shares it had in the electricity distributor Disnorte-Dissur officially passed into the hands of the State.
Inter-American Dialogue researcher Manuel Orozco explains in the investigation that the reason for these confiscations of properties and shares by the ruling party “is the search for a footprint investment and express trade”. “The confiscations are giving them the opportunity to enter and control the private sector,” adds the specialist.
Orozco maintains that the properties of large businessmen can add up to 300 million dollars, since there are cases that are not publicly known. “It is a great business, because the confiscations are clientelist in nature to give prizes,” Orozco continues.
Relatives of affected opponents
Another conclusion drawn by the investigation is that the Ortega-Murillo regime has extended confiscations to the relatives of those denationalized. For example, on February 1, 2024, the police occupied an apartment condominium owned by the Chamorro Barrios family in the tourist resort of San Juan del Sur. The intervened property is called Farallón de Sotavento, whose value, according to a 2017 appraisal, is 2.2 million dollars.
“The founding owners of the Farallón de Sotavento condominium society were Mrs. Violeta Barrios de Chamorro and her children Pedro Joaquín, Cristiana, Carlos Fernando (all journalists) and Claudia. The matriarch then distributed the condominium shares proportionally among the siblings. In 2017, Carlos Fernando and Pedro Joaquín sold their shares to other owners. Of the four siblings, only Claudia Chamorro Barrios was not denationalized by the regime. However, the property has been confiscated in its entirety,” the investigation states.
The OPTA report delved into properties belonging to denationalized opponents, businessmen and business chambers, private universities and the media. For now, unlike the first “piñata”, the document reveals that the properties have been illegally granted to public institutions: the Nicaraguan Social Security Institute (INSS), the National Technological Institute (INATEC), the National Institute for the Promotion of Competition (Procompetencia) and the Ministry of Health (MINSA).
“There is little or no information about the properties whose confiscations have already been carried out by the Ortega-Murillo regime. Two factors influence this: the usual secrecy that prevails in the public apparatus, especially in the Attorney General’s Office (PGR), and the fear of the victims to report it for fear of more reprisals,” OPTA insists.
“This investigation manages to document the completed confiscation of 135 properties. Their total value amounts to 250 million dollars. However, this amount is just the tip of the iceberg of confiscations. […]. This first quantification exercise, being an initial number, calculated from the limited information available, should be seen as a starting point for an enormous debt that grows every day, and that all Nicaraguans will have to pay in the future. , they warn.
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