Ortega revives confiscations as a State policy
By Divergentes, Feb 23, 2022
The repression unleashed by the regime include an increase in expropriations at the hands of operators of Ortega and Murillo. To the takeover of thousands of manzanas of land have been added the newsrooms of communications media, NGO offices and the homes of opponents. But they have also confiscated the assets and shares of international enterprises, universities recently, and even diplomatic missions, in an illegal frenzy that calls to mind the so called “Piñata” of the 1980s.
The transfer of six private universities – with all their assets – to the State is the latest confiscatory measure of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo since they returned to power in 2007. In a covert way, through legal decrees and appealing to the discourse of nationalization, Nicaraguan leaders have confiscated distributors of electric energy, foreign enterprises, communications media, diplomatic missions, NGOs, individual homes, and farms of opponents.
The confiscatory measures became evident after the rebellion of April 2018, when hundreds of squatters sent by the Sandinista Front for National Liberation (FSLN) took over 9,800 manzanas of land in eight provinces of the country, according to the Union of Agricultural Producers of Nicaragua (UPANIC). 91% of the lands taken belonged to the farming sector.
The business owners interpreted the confiscations as reprisals against the association leaders who joined the Civic Alliance during the dialogue of 2018. In fact, the last two presidents of UPANIC, Michael Healy and Álvaro Vargas, who also were president and vice president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP) respectively, were arrested on October 20, 2021 and are now in El Chipote prison.
Confiscations are prohibited by the Constitution of Nicaragua. The second paragraph of article 44 states that real estate assets only “for reasons of public utility or social interest can be subject of expropriation according to the law, after payment in cash of a fair compensation.” The fourth paragraph of the article categorically establishes that “the confiscation of assets is prohibited. Officials who violate this disposition will respond with their own assets at any time for the damages incurred.” Nevertheless, these rights have been violated, according to lawyers and owners of assets confiscated by the regime of Nicaragua.
That same article 44 states that “the right to the private property of real estate and furniture and instruments and means of production is ensured.”
DIVERGENTES did an accounting of the confiscations that have been made public since 2018, and that reveal the phantom of a policy carried out during the first presidential period of the Sandinista in the 1980s, when Ortega was also in power. That dark chapter in the history of Nicaragua ended with the confiscation of thousands of properties that was called “The Piñata”. This created a debt of 2.2 billion dollars that Nicaraguan citizens are still paying for with their taxes.
Squatters
On December 30, 2020 Esperanza Lacayo died, the mother of Michael Healy, who was the president of COSEP until the moment of his capture four months ago. Esperanza died without having the regime of Ortega and Murillo return to her some 200 manzanas which were illegally confiscated from her by some armed people at the end of 2018.
The properties are located in Buenas Aires, Rivas, in southern Nicaragua, whose land was used for the planting of sugar cane and bananas. The farms are called Santa Lucía, Zopilote and Chatilla, where there is also a cemetery of the Healy-Lacayo family.
Esperanza Lacayo said that the farms were taken over while she was doing a medical checkup in the United States. They looted her home, with all her personal belongings. “Two of my daughters went, María Esperanza, the oldest, was in her truck and got down to try to talk to them, but three masked men held a gun on her,” said Lacayo.
Up to December 2018 there were 70 cases like that of the Healy-Lacayo family, where squatters held private property in their own hands. Even though in these four years some have been given back, more than 4,000 manzanas of land continue being invaded.
The Tomza Case
The Tomza Corporation, a multinational company that works on the sale of liquid gas in Central America, wanted to work in Nicaragua since 2005. It got a permit to build installations, but when the construction was 92% finished, the permit was revoked by the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (MARENA). Since July 2016 no staff have been allowed to enter the business. The workers were expelled by the Police.
The property was left abandoned since then. But in 2020 the expropriation was carried out, according to Fernando Carreón, Director of Corporate Relations of Tomza Central America. There was no notification given to the owners of Tomza, but in March 2021 they learned that it was being painted with the colors of the Nicaraguan Petroleum Company (PETRONIC). The executives wanted to ask what had happened, but in the Property Registry they did not want to give out the file because it is “confidential.”
The Executive said that that assets of the investment of the Tomza Guatemala Enterprise, S.A. were $4 million dollars, and that the expropriation reflects the legal insecurity of investors in Nicaragua. The business owners said that they would resort to international bodies because “the rights of a multinational business with foreign investment are being violated.”
Communications media and NGOs
On February 23, 2021 the confiscation was carried out of the buildings of the communications media 100% Noticias and Confidencial. The regime transferred the properties to the Ministry of Health. In those days the same thing happened to the installations of the Institute for the Development of Democracy (IPADE) and the Nicaragua Center for Human Rights (CENIDH).
Last year several non-profit organizations have denounced confiscations. For example, the Association of Women Against Violence denounced that two of their properties were confiscated where their office and a shelter operated. The environmental organization Fundación del Río reported that since August 2020 six of their areas were confiscated. The areas included a total of 454 manzanas of forest, two plots of land and four areas of forest conservation.
One of the first organizations to denounce confiscation was the Center for Health Consultancy Information and Services (CISAS), which the feminist Ana Quirós led, who was stripped of her Nicaraguan nationality for being part of the protests that began on April 18, 2018. The National Assembly decided that the assets and shares that belong to the NGO “must be given to the State of Nicaragua” following its liquidation.
The ”nationalization” of TSK
On Monday December 21, 2020 83% of the shares that the Spanish group TSK Melfosur had in the Disnorte-Dissur electric energy distributor were officially transferred to the hands of the State through an “extraordinary” approval of a Law for the Sovereign Assurance and Guarantee of the Supply of Electric Energy for the Nicaraguan Population.
This first article of this law states that “it declares the totality of the shares owned by the company TSK Melfosur International to be of sovereign security and national interest.” Nevertheless, the document does not leave clear in what way the State acquired those shares that had a value of $57.8 million dollars.
For experts consulted on energy issues, this maneuver “is a brutal sign of expropriation because they did not even state the causes for which the shares were taken from the company.” With this law the State moved to controlling nearly the entire model of the energy market: transmission, distribution, and commercialization. The only thing that is not completely in the hands of the State yet is generation where the private sector participates.
The confiscation of the assets of Taiwan
On December 10, 2021 Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo cut relations with Taiwan which had been maintained for more than 20 years, to establish relations with China. On December 26 the intention of Taiwan was made known to donate the building of the diplomatic mission to the Archdiocese of Managua of the Catholic Church. Nevertheless, that same day a press release from the Attorney General of the Republic stated that the recognition of the state of “only one China implied the immediate registry of all real estate, furniture and equipment assets in the name of the recognized state of the Popular Republic of China, with absolute and unrestricted ownership and domain.”
Taiwan rejected this and described it as “an illegal occupation of their property and its illegal transfer.” The small Asian country said that it made a “symbolic sale” to the Catholic Church which it signed on December 22 with local lawyers. “According to related international law and article 45 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, after the termination of diplomatic relations between Taiwan and Nicaragua on December 10, 2021, the government of Nicaragua was obliged to protect the installations of the Embassy of the Republic of China (Taiwan), along with its assets and files,” Taiwan pointed out in a press release.
Homes
Like Sandinism did in the 1980s with the properties of Somocistas, Ortega and Murillo have carried out confiscations of assets of opponents. The very house of the presidential couple in the El Carmen neighborhood in Managua was confiscated from the business person and former contra Jaime Morales Carazo. Nevertheless, when Ortega returned to power in 2007, Morales Carazo was his running-mate as vice president. The business man said that “he had arrived at a very satisfactory agreement, very gentlemanlike, and all settled” over the home. In exchange, the leaders have never spoken about the issue.
In August 2021 the journalist Patricia Orozco denounced that the regime confiscated her home, located in El Carmen, that the State had granted her 36 years ago. The journalist said that under the presence of the police they forced her family to leave the home late at night and in the early morning and under pressure to sign a document of “voluntary transfer.”
Orozco pointed out that like her family, many families were being dispossessed of their properties. “They live under harassment, pressure and threats, but the fear of reprisal keeps them from making public denouncements and revealing the actions that are violating their rights,” said Orozco.
One of the emblematic cases since 2018 is the takeover of the white, two-story home located in the Monimbó neighborhood that now has been turned into a police station. The property in reality belongs to Lucila Urrutia, a retired teacher, over eighty years old, who was left it by her deceased husband Rafael Solórzano. As the newspaper La Prensa recounts, because of its strategic location the house was first requested in a coercive manner by the rebels of Masaya to use as a medical post. Nevertheless, since July 17, 2018 when the Police carried out “Operación Limpieza” the property has been in the hands of that institution. Since then, the woman has tried to recover her house through motions to the municipal government, but they have not responded to them. “It is a political matter,” they told her in March 2021.