This joint work by Nicaragua Investiga and Connectas is a very important piece of investigative journalism that gives an initial glimpse into the rampant nepotism that permeates the government. As the report itself says, these initial seven families are only the tip of the iceberg. This reality is another serious challenge to those who cling to the belief that this government is revolutionary.
The seven powerful families: Nepotism in Nicaragua
By Nicaragua Investiga and CONNECTAS
When Daniel Ortega returned to the presidency of Nicaragua in 2007, he began to weave an entire structure where whole families have been placed in important posts to maintain control over public institutions. So, in the 15 years of government that the Sandinista leader has been in power, nepotism has become a State policy that shields and ensures his continuance there.
There are at least seven families close to Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillo that form his circle of trust and ensure the availability of those most loyal in the service of public functions. The clans are organized to control the Presidency, Legislative Branch, Judicial Branch, National Police, the General Customs Office, Migration and Immigration; and the Foreign Ministry. Key posts are held by those most trusted by the presidential couple, who in turn are responsible for filling in positions of lower hierarchy with their friends and loyalists as well.
This investigation of Nicaragua Investiga and CONNECTAS maps out the extensive network of nepotism present in at least 21 public institutions, with 88 verified cases, a figure capable of filling the staff of a hospital. The investigation focuses on these seven “powerful families”, even though it also includes other cases that shine light on how nepotism permeates public functions in Nicaragua.
The cases were verified through an exhaustive search. Some are “vox populi” – like those of the Ortega-Murillo clan – and have been the object of criticism for years. Others have been managed with more discretion, but their implications were confirmed through official decrees published in La Gaceta (official daily newspaper of Nicaragua), in documentation of the General Office for State Appointments, websites of public entities and reports from official communications media. The research is accompanied by a detailed database[1], where the reader can navigate through the documentary evidence that corroborate the positions of the family clans.
“After April 2018 nepotism has been the basis which has sustained the regime,” says Yader Morazán, former official of the Judicial Branch, an institution in which this investigation detected 22 cases. “Favors are being paid to people who were loyal during the repression or the harshest days of the massacres in Nicaragua”, he notes.
On the date that Morazán refers to state repression without precedent in post war Nicaragua was carried out, which left 355 deaths and thousands of wounded, as the Interamerican Commission for Human Rights (IACHR) documented.
The Ortega-Murillo clan: the starting point of the nepotism
The Ortega-Murillo family can easily make up a soccer team, a sport that requires 11 players and five substitutes. The presidential clan has at least 16 of its members embedded in the network of nepotism, even though not all their posts appear in La Gaceta.
At the end of last January Daniel Edmundo Ortega, one of the less known sons of the presidential couple, surprisingly appeared in a public post as the Media Coordinator of the Communication and Citizenry Council, an office of the regime that his mother and vice president of Nicaragua controls, defines, oversees, and ensures the editorial line of the media under the leadership of the official party. Daniel Edmundo is married to Mara Stotti, the Director of Tourism Development of the Nicaraguan Tourism Institute (INTUR), as confirmed in the web site of that institution. Stotti´s academic studies and experience in the tourism sector are unknown.
For his part Camilo Daniel Ortega Herrera, son of Ortega and the former guerilla Laticia Herrera, moves in the shadows. Even though he is one of those most separate from the clan, nepotism even reaches him: he acts as Director of Information Technology in the Central Property Registry.
Another family member, Rafael Ortega, has represented the government of his father with the rank of Minister with Russia, China and other countries of the Mideast, where he has met with potential investors, even though he does not have an official post. Along with his former wife, Yadira Leets, he was in charge of managing the Zanzibar investments and the Nicaraguan Oil Distributor (DNP-Petronic), which controls the importation and distribution of oil in the country.
The list does not end there: Katherine Argeñal, the wife of Carlos Ortega Murillo, is the general manager of DNP-Petronic, as this investigation confirmed in an official document of the financial statements which she signed and sealed in her post.
The embeddedness of the presidential family in State posts is visible, but the only time that Ortega has referred to the topic, he guaranteed that the accusations of nepotism in his government were “false”, because according to him his children only are “collaborators.” “My children do not have posts in the Government. One of them (Laureano) contributes, but his work is within a Foundation (Incanto) that has to do with promoting singing among young people, low-income children,” stated the president in an interview granted in September 2018 to the TV chain France 24.
Incanto organizes opera concerts in exclusive places, which the elite that surround the presidential family attend, and their website says “will obtain contributions coming from the collaboration of public institutions and private enterprises for the implementation of activities.” An investigation from Artículo 66 revealed that the foundation receives money through checks from the Ministry of the Treasury and Public Credit.
Even though Daniel Ortega does not dare acknowledge it, Laureano is one of his most media savvy children with greater participation in matters of government. In October 2009 he started as an investment promotion adviser for the tourism sector in ProNicaragua. In 2012 he was named presidential adviser for International Investment and Trade with the rank of Minister, heading the agency itself. None of these posts were stated in the interview mentioned while being questioned by the journalist Marc Perelman.
For from distancing himself from power, on February 22 of this year Laureano Ortega was named by his father Member of the Advisory Council of the International Airport Administrative Enterprise (as confirmed in La Gaceta). He arrived there along with José Mojica Mejía a trusted lawyer and presumed front man for the family in power, who appears as the legal representative of several enterprises connected to the Ortega-Murillo children. Even the State Department of the United States sanctioned him in July 2020 for “corrupt activities of the Ortega regime in Nicaragua and benefitting from them.”
Laureano is also sanctioned by Washington as “a key facilitator of the corruption of the Ortega regime,” and for “incurring in large acts of corruption under the argument that he is head of the ProNicaragua investment agenda,” according to the State Department.
The son of the first couple studied Audiovisual Production at the Veritas University in Costa Rica, the most exclusive and expensive university in that country. He also studied music at the Luigi Boccherini of Lucca Musical Institute, the Guissepe Verdi Conservatory in Italy, and sociology at the Central American University (UCA), in addition to Political Sciences at the Thomas More University. Nothing connects him to knowledge in the field of economics until his recent appointment.
Along with Laureano has to be added his wife, Karen Santamaría, who is an employee of the National Electrical Transmission Enterprise (ENATREL), responsible for distributing energy in most of the country. Like him, she is not known for university studies on this topic nor tis it known what function she performs in this state entity.
According to Ortega his other children “studied sociology, journalism and they liked communications. So, the accusation of nepotism is completely false. Let them tell me, how many of my children are government officials?”, he challenged in that same interview.
Even though the president stated at the beginning of his mandate in 2007 that his government would be “transparent” and that he would begin “a new path” in public function to ensure “Nicaraguan families would live with dignity”, he never has revealed how high the salaries of his children go in the exercise of their public functions.
During the same interview with France 24, Ortega denied that Rosario Murillo has the post of Vice President of the country for being his spouse and attributed these functions to “her merits”, describing as “machos” those who questioned the position of the polemical “co-president”, as she was named after the Sandinista leader assumed his fourth consecutive mandate in January. “I met the compañera Rosario as a militant of the Front and she is in the post for being a militant of the Front as well as for her abilities,” said Ortega, who in addition categorically stated that “this does not mean that we are putting together a dynasty.”
But in January 2015, three years before that interview where Ortega denied the charges of nepotism, his daughters Camila and Luciana travelled with him and Murillo – as acting Foreign Minister – to San José, Costa Rica, to participate in the summit of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC). At that time the two young people were accredited as “presidential advisors”, but the post has not been formalized in La Gaceta. Likewise, Rafael was accredited as a “presidential advisor” with the rank of minister.
Camila is the Director of Nicaragua Diseña, an entity that received State funds through the Nicaraguan Tourism Institute (INTUR). With her siblings Maurice and Luciana she also directs television Channel 13, which even though does not belong to the State, does receive millions of dollars of public contracts for “publicity”. And if those were not enough responsibilities, she is the coordinator of the National Commission for the Creative Economy, that according to its website “was organized by direction of the Presidency of the Republic.”
This commission organizes the annual event Nicaragua Emprende, which has financing from the Ministry of the Family, Community, Cooperative and Associative Economy (MEFCCA), and where they named Xiomara Blandino as the General Director. She is nothing less than the new spouse of Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo. Blandino studied architecture but did not finish her studies: she did three years. Nor is she known for studies related to the area of economics nor entrepreneurism.
According to article 130 of the Constitution of Nicaragua, “for naming public officials the prohibition of the fourth degree of consanguinity and second degree of affinity will be applied”, which is broken with the public posts of the children of the first couple. This is further enhanced with the Integrity Act for Public Servants, which in its article 8 established the same restrictions for relatives. But it is not followed either.
Ligia Gómez, former political secretary of the Sandinista Front and former manager for economic research of the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN), explains that when she was in her post, she would receive all correspondence by email directly from Murillo, like all the political secretaries of State institutions. “The first recipients were her children, then the rest of the cabinet,” she stated. “This is a direct way of sending the message about how they consider themselves to be owners, as a family, of the government and all the structures of power,” indicates Gómez, who was part of the massive wave of firings in public institutions in 2018 for expressing her rejection of the state repression.
Gómez maintains that the nepotism not only has to do with the favoritism and salaries which are assigned them at the time of benefitting from these appointments, but that in addition favors corruption. “For example, the protection services that the National Police perform with the taxes that all of us Nicaraguan pay, even purchases, everything that has to do with fuel, tires, maintenance, drivers, everything is paid for with taxes from the people for the use of the entire family and their closest associates,” she says.
The other powerful families
Gustavo Porras Cortés, doctor by profession, is one of the people closest to the presidential family. And he has several public posts. He is the president of the Legislative Branch, the General Secretary of the Federation of Health Care Workers (FETSALUD) since 1984, the National Coordinator of the National Workers Front (FNT) since 1996, and member of the National Directorate of the Sandinista Front, as described in the website of the Parliament.
His power is enormous, and thanks to him he has been able to place part of his family in important posts. His daughter, Sonia Guillermina Porras Green, was named (as confirmed in La Gaceta) as Adjunct Secretary of the Creative and Orange Economy, that Camila Ortega directs. And Gusmara Porras, another one of his daughters, is head of Gynecological Services in the Fernando Vélez Paiz Public Hospital. “Each perinatal clinic has the objective of capturing pregnant patients in their first trimester who have associated pathologies like high blood pressure, pre-eclampsia, gestational diabetes and in this way keep them from getting more complicated,” she declared from her official position last year to official media in Nicaragua.
For his part, the brother of the deputy, Guillermo Porras Cortés, is an advisor and coordinator of COVID-19 Treatment Protocol of the same hospital where Gusmara works, his niece. “I want to express with all my heart the pride that I have in Guillermo, my brother, true pride…” he praised Porras while recognizing the difficult work of the health workers in the midst of the pandemic.
In the Judicial Branch, meanwhile, eleven relatives were identified of the magistrate Alba Luz Ramos Vanegas, the current president of an institution which has been key for the mechanism of a hard hand against the opponents of the Ortega regime. Her daughter María Alejandra Ramos is her assistant, despite having confessed that she does not like law and that she is passionate about modeling. “I do not know yet what I am going to study, but I like architecture, I like to draw, I have a good hand, I like business administration. I do not like law,” she said in an interview with the now extinct El Nuevo Diario.
“Within the places where I worked there were entire families who showed up in the mornings. The father, the mother and daughter would get out of the same vehicles,” stated the former judicial official Yader Morazán. “It is a system of castes and privileges where only privileged groups can prosper those people who have certain contacts.”
This is the case of Adán Ramos Vanegas, forensic doctor of the Institute for Legal Medicine (IML) and brother of the magistrate, one of the most powerful women in the circle close to the Ortega-Murillo family. In turn, other relatives of Alba Luz Ramos hold the posts of judges, magistrates, and other jobs within the Judicial Branch.
Four nephews are in key posts: Abelardo Alvir Ramos is the Seventh Judge of the District Criminal Court in Managua, as confirmed by the website of the Judicial Branch; and Adda Vanegas Ramos was sworn in by her aunt in 2017 as Presidential Magistrate of the Criminal Court Specialized in Violence of the Appeal Court of Managua (TAM), according to a press release. Meanwhile, Egberto Ramos Solís has the post of Seventh Judge for Execution and Seizure of the Judiciary; and Alma Larios Ramos is the director of the Office for the Execution and Oversight of Criminal Punishment of Adolescents.
To all of these has to be added another niece, Lorgia Larios Ramos, who has been placed in another area of the State with cases of nepotism: Health. In her LinkedIn profile she says that she is a professor in the School of Medicine in the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN) but she is also designated as the chief of Pneumology Services in the Dr. Oscar Danilo Rosales Teaching Hospital, located in the province of León, where this family is from.
Morazán comments that not anyone can be an official in the Judicial Branch. “In order to get in you have to have someone who has enough power, because it provides a lot of labor stability and the salaries are higher than any other State institution.”
Another powerful family is that of Francisco Campbell Hooker, where nepotism is “vox populi”. He has a long history as a diplomat of Ortega in the United States and has been able to form an extensive network of relatives with deep social and political relationships that extend from the Caribbean Coast to Managua. Campbell Hooker for more than a decade has been the ambassador of Nicaragua in Washington, while his brother Lumberto Campbell is a magistrate of the Electoral Tribunal, an entity also co-opted by the Sandinista regime.
Returning to the diplomatic side, it is known that he studied Tourism and Hotel Management in the UNAN, but he is not known for experience in international relations, nor has he done any studies in political science. But his service outside the country has allowed him to place nearly his entire family in diplomatic posts.
For example, his wife Miriam Hooker Coe is general consul of Nicaragua in the Embassy in the United States. With her they have two children: Mabel Campbell Hooker and Michael Campbell Hooker. The former is Press and Culture Attaché in that same Embassy in Washington. While her brother has three diplomatic posts and appears defending the Ortega regime in international forums. On the one hand he is the permanent alternate representative of Nicaragua, with rank of extraordinary and plenipotentiary ambassador to the OAS; he also is ambassador to the Government of India based in the city of New Delhi; and in addition, he is minister adviser to Ortega for International Relations and with the Great Caribbean. In this way the Campbell Hookers are allowed to live as a family in the United States.
In December 2021 Michael Campbell read an angry speech before the OAS describing it as “that ugly thing”. He stated that the session was a type of judgement against the organization itself for “all its outrages, as judged they are, for crimes against humanity before all the tribunals of the people, the United States, their bosses.” And later he objected, “This is another moment which underlines the insignificant condition of lackeys and on their knees about this organization which has lost all legitimacy or credibility and that do not have any respect among people.”
The network of nepotism of this family does not end there. The ambassador has his brother, Maylon Gregory Campbell as Regional Delegate of the Ministry of the Family Economy (MEFCCA), and his nephew Joel Narváez Campbell is District Family Court judge in Bluefields, one of the cases that is less well known.
Carlos Guadamuz, an activist of the Nunca+ Human Rights Collective, indicated that it is important to see nepotism in all its dimensions to understand that its impacts are massive. “Nepotism does not just have to do with the appointment of people, nepotism also has to do with favoritism, with concessions, with the privileges that they can obtain,” he indicated.
Guadamuz agrees that this practice carries the consequences of the inefficient use of public resources, supernumeraries, inflation of payrolls, bonuses and the lack of oversight. He states that all of these cases are considered as “serious misconduct within the Civil Service and Administrative Career Law.” And he points out that they damage the entire citizenry, because the money that is being wasted could be used for social investment: like health care and education.
He also emphasizes that opportunities are being denied people with better professional training and experience to compete for those posts under conditions of equity and transparency. “This produces a chain of negative impacts on the country, like economic and material damages to the State,” he stated.
The list of families close to Ortega welded to the State does not end there. Francisco Díaz Madriz, general director of the National Police and in law of Ortega, has his daughter Blanca Díaz Flores, wife of Maurice Ortega Murillo, as an adviser to the Ministry of Promotion, Industry and Commerce (MIFIC). Two more daughters of Díaz Madriz are in important public posts: Tania Díaz Flores is Vice Minister for Transportation and Infrastructure since 2017; and Nahima Janett Díaz Flores was an adviser to the General Office of Telcor for five years, but after the death of the previous director of that institution, Orlando Castillo, she was promoted to the principal post in June 2020.
On her part Haydée Díaz Madriz, sister of Francisco, has been Vice Minister of the Ministry of Education of Nicaragua since 2015. That year Murillo appointed her first to the post and later made it official in La Gaceta. She does not appear before the media very much, despite the importance of the post that she has.
In the Military Hospital, which is state run and under the Ministry of Defense, Lieutenant Colonel and doctor in gynecology Alma Avilés Castillo has been the chief of services of the Women and Children´s Division for several years. She is the sister of Julio César Avilés Castillo, Chief Commandant of the Army of Nicaragua.
In addition, the son of this high military official, Julio Avilés Sánchez works in Telcor as a specialist in Planning for the Nicaragua Broad Band Program, according to his LinkedIn profile, but research of the digital media DIVERGENTES revealed that he works on impacting public opinion to promote the rhetoric of the Sandinista regime through a troll farm that Meta eliminated.
Another family where nepotism reigns is that of Nestor Moncada Lau, the fearsome and powerful adviser on security issues of the Ortega-Murillos. His son, Ernesto David Moncada Solís, is the inspector general of the General Office on Migration and Immigration of Nicaragua, with a rank that allows him to maintain oversight over comings and goings in the country. And Claudia Moncada Solís, daughter of Moncada Lau, is an official of Telcor – as this investigation was able to confirm, even though the position that she has is not known.
Meanwhile the brother of the presidential adviser, Óscar David Moncada Lau is the director of the General Office of Customs Services (DGA), as evidenced in the payroll of this entity in the hands of Nicaragua Investiga and CONNECTAS. This family moves among the shadows and getting information about them is nearly impossible, even though the Treasury Department of the United States sanctioned them for “corruption” and “control” over the tax and customs authorities of Nicaragua while enriching the members of the Ortega-Murillo regime. The sanctions were imposed on his wife Lydia Vargas de Moncada and his five children. Moncada himself already had sanctions from some years ago.
From nepotism to cronyism
Martha Patricia Molina, lawyer for the Pro Transparency and Anticorruption Observatory, maintains that nepotism has “become naturalized” with Ortega in power and points out that this practice causes inefficiency in public functions because there is not the same rigor or level of demand on a relative or friend in the performance of their tasks, but that – she emphasizes- the important thing is that “what this relative has coming is covering up all the corruption that you are committing.”
Another expert in public management, who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of political reprisals, pointed out that when a relative is hired, even if that person has experience for the post, it could be “dealing with a situation of influence trafficking and conflict of interests that does not allow one to judge whether those merits are real or not.” And she questions the fact that the Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR) is not doing its job to ensure that this type of practices do not happen in the State. “In financial disclosures you do not only see the assets of a person, but the degree and interrelationships that that person might have with others. If you receive a resume to fill a certain post, it would be to do so through a competitive process where they compete and the best in terms of merits wins. But it is not working that way,” she says.
Denouncements from two former workers of the Nicaraguan State reveal that there is a common method for recruiting lower-level posts, which was radicalized more starting in 2018 to “pay political favors” and stating that the people who are in those posts “respond to the interests of Sandinism.” There are close to 150,000 public servants functioning, according to official data quoted by Rosario Murillo in 2020.
Ana Hernández, a nurse who for more than two decades worked in the Óscar Danilo Rosales Public Hospital, located in the León Province, and fired in 2018 for having rejected the orders of the Ministry of Health to not treat opponents wounded during the social protests of that year, says that to get to a state post one thing is principally needed: political backing of the Sandinista Front and being recommended by a person of trust.
The support document is provided by the territorial structures of the party, like the Citizen Power Councils (CPC), along with the Provincial Committee or the provincial offices of the Sandinista Youth. The support documents state that the recommended person is “an outstanding militant” or even a “descendent of a family of collaborators”, as verified in documents of this type in the hands of Nicaragua Investiga and CONNECTAS. “If I had a post as coordinator of a certain area, I would bring along my sister, my nephew, my friend,” revealed Hernández.
To document the nearly 90 cases of nepotism uncovered in this investigation we had to circumvent the iron clad state secrecy and the fear of former public servants who understand that telling the truth is a threat to their security and that of their families. What is verified in this journalistic work seems to be just the tip of an immense iceberg but is without a doubt a sign of how nepotism is a model of government that ensures absolute control on the part of the regime of Daniel Ortega and buys loyalty at a high price for the country.
[1] See middle of original article in Spanish for database: https://www.connectas.org/poder-nepotismo-nicaragua/