Nicaragua: Narco State of the Sandinista Front
In La Prensa, Feb 2, 2025
A series of events, investigations and denouncements show the intimate relationship of the Nicaraguan dictator with narcotraffickers: the liberation of narcos in exchange for money, safe haven for them, and the seizure of money without arresting anyone, among other anomalies.
When La Prensa published this past January 16th the reasons why the United States has raised the reward for the head of the dictator Nicolás Maduro to $25 million dollars, the regime of Daniel Ortega also ended up being tainted.
The news about the role of Nicaragua in the network of Venezuelan narcotrafficking was exposed in the official accusation against Maduro and his functionaries, as capos of the Cartel of Los Soles, according to the presentation of charges of the Department of Justice in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York in 2020.
On page 11 of the 28-page document it says that in 2009 Maduro Moros, Diosdado Cabello Rondón and Hugo Carvajal Barrios participated in a meeting with a representative of the FARC in Caracas.
During the meeting, the attendees also analyzed the political situation in Honduras, which was going through a coup against Manuel Zelaya. Cabello Rondón expressed his concern that the instability in the country could affect the drug trafficking business, warning that the situation could “screw the business.”
In that encounter they discussed the movement of a four-ton loan of cocaine which the guerrillas were willing to turn over to the Cartel of Los Soles, but they needed a different port of entry because of the Honduran crisis.
Cabello Rondón then ordered that the drugs be deposited in a specific point of Venezuela, where a plane would transport them to Nicaragua, to then be sent to Mexico and finally to the United States, according to the investigation against Maduro.
It is also agreed that Maduro would travel to Honduras under the pretext of mediating in the crisis as the Venezuelan foreign minister, but with the intention of intervening in favor of the Los Soles Cartel and keep the political crisis from interfering with the drug trafficking operations of the organization.
Narcos come and go
Bismarck Antonio Jirón Lira, a Nicaraguan drug trafficker connected to the Colombian Norte de Valle cartel, in 2007 was sentenced to 13 years in jail for the international transportation of drugs, but the sentence was reduced to 5 years by magistrates of the appeal courts of Managua, and in addition the sentence was suspended and he was given parole.
In 2012 they captured him again with $900,000 in Managua. They sentenced him to 30 years in jail, but inexplicably he was freed three years later in 2015.
In 2018 he was captured again, this time for murder, because in the northern part of the country the gang that he led, called Los Moncada, killed a man who supposedly had stolen $600,000 from Jirón Lira.
Nevertheless, a judge in Managua, Abelardo Alvir, closed the case for lack of merits and ordered the liberation of Jirón Lira.
In Nicaragua there are several cases like the case of Jirón Lira, drug traffickers captured with large amounts of money, some convicted with long sentences, but who in a short period of time are freed by the judicial system of the country.
The explanation for these absurd events can be found in the cables of the US Embassy in Managua, revealed in 2010, which indicated that “Daniel Ortega and the Sandinistas receive money on the part of international drug traffickers, in general in exchange for ordering the Sandinista judges to allow drug traffickers captured by the police and army to be released.”
Nicaragua, a Narco-state.
It is not the first time that the regime of the Ortega Murillo is connected to drug trafficking actions.
In September 2023 a team of researchers from Cambridge University Press, the editorial section of the prestigious British University, demystified the Sandinista propaganda which promoted Nicaragua as the “safest country in Central America.”
To the contrary: it categorized it as a Narco state where the party in power, the Sandinista Front of National Liberation (FSLN), acted as a “plaza boss” and the security institutions, army and police as hit men of the cartel.
The investigation was called “Debunking the myth of Nicaraguan exceptionalism: Crime, drugs and the political economy of violence in a Narco-state.”
The authors are Julienne Weegal, associate professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Amsterdam, Dennis Rodgers, from the Centre on Conflict, Development and Peace-building CCDP), Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies, Geneva; and José Luis Rocha, Associate Researcher of the José Simeón Cañas Central American University.
The document maintains that the low impact of violence linked to drug trafficking in Nicaragua, in contrast with the rest of Central America, was the product of the complicity between the State and criminal organizations.
In contrast to other countries where the cartels waged war over the control of routes, “in Nicaragua the business flows without obstacles due to a non-aggression pact,” argued the investigators.
According to the study, this agreement has allowed the authorities to maintain an image of safety, while they regulate the flow of drugs in exchange for economic and political benefits.
The academics question the official discourse which presents the National Police as an efficient force in the fight against organized crime.
In their judgement, the absence of verifiable reports of drug seizures and breakups of cartels or gangs is due to a model “in which the government negotiates directly with the drug traffickers to avoid violent confrontations.”
“The myth of Nicaraguan exceptionalism has worked to conceal the establishment of a highly organized Narco-state,” it concludes.
The study also points out that the capture of the State on the part of the Sandinista elite has allowed drug trafficking to turn into an activity controlled by those in power.
In that sense, the researchers recall that the documents leaked by Wikileaks in 2010 already warned that the FSLN obtained financing from drug traffickers in exchange for freeing their members in jail.
In addition, the analysis highlights that the Supreme Electoral Council provided identity cards to drug traffickers, thus consolidating their protection within the country.
“Drug trafficking in Nicaragua has become less violent not because the State is more efficient, but because the connections between the government and criminal organizations are tighter than in other places,” the research points out.
According to the authors, this stability pact allowed drug trafficking to continue without the bloody disputes which affect other nations in the region.
The investigation concludes that the dictatorship has not eradicated drug trafficking but has institutionalized it: “Nicaragua is a Narco-state.”
Pablo Escobar, the antecedent
The first time that Daniel Ortega was seen to be involved in issues of drug trafficking was in 1984, when he was a member of the Junta de Gobierno, during the first Sandinista regime, and in addition was a presidential candidate for the Sandinista Front (FSLN) for the elections which were held in November of that year.
The US government of Ronald Reagan, at that time a financier of the Contras who were fighting the Sandinistas, revealed in July of 1984 some photographs where the Colombian capo Pablo Escobar was seen unloading sacks of cocaine from a small plane in the Los Brasiles airport in Managua.
At the moment the images were captured, as became known later, Escobar and other Colombian capos sought refuge in Managua, under the protection of the Sandinistas, in exchange for large amounts of dollars, because the Colombian justice system was looking for them for the murder of the Minister of Justice of that country, Rodrigo Lara Bonilla.
After the revelation of the photos, Escobar and the other Colombian capos returned to Colombia. Escobar never wanted to speak about his stay in Nicaragua, but his wife, son, brothers, some of his former partners and even his lover did talk about it, who have described those days in several books and also in interviews.
Relationships with the Colombian guerrillas
To maintain themselves economically, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), the oldest guerrilla group in the world, supported themselves from cocaine trafficking.
According to the page InSight Crime, that Colombian guerrilla group did come to admit that at a certain moment they came to earn up to $450 for each kilo of drugs which were produced and moved within the territory which they controlled in Colombia.
Daniel Ortega prides himself on being a friend of different Colombian guerrilla groups, but especially of the FARC.
In 1999, as observed in a photo, Ortega visited the FARC camp in Colombia and gave the “August C. Sandino Order” to the top leader of the FARC, Manuel Marulanda (now deceased), who was known as “Tirofijo”, who Ortega also called “dear brother.”
In 2009, Ortega now back in power, gave asylum to the Colombians Martha Pérez Gutiérrez and Doris Bohóquez Torres, as well as the Mexican Lucía Morett, connected with the FARC guerrillas, after surviving an attack from the armed forces of Colombia on March 1, 2008.
And one year later, Ortega also granted political asylum to Rubén Darío Granda, the brother of the Colombian guerrilla of the FARC, Rodrigo Granda, known as “The Chancellor”. Rubén Darío Granda at that time was designated by the Colombian authorities to be responsible for carrying out million dollar financial transactions with money of the FARC.
They seize money, but not drugs nor do they arrest narcos
Since Ortega returned to power in 2007 he began to change the fate of goods seized from drug trafficking.
Prior to this, all the goods occupied from drug trafficking, be it money, vehicles or property, were shared according to the criteria established in Law 285, the Law of Narcotics, Psychotropics and other Controlled Substances.
Nevertheless, the regime changed that and currently the way in which these assets are shared is unknown.
Law 285 was repealed and in its place the regime approved Law 735 which has a long name: Law for the Prevention, Investigation and Persecution of Organized Crime and the Administration of Seized, Confiscated and Abandoned Assets.
This is a law to fight organized crime and establishes some very broad and discretional criteria on how to distribute assets taken or seized.
Nevertheless, no one knows whether the authorities of the dictatorship comply with these criteria.
In recent years it has become a custom for the Police of the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo to seize money from drug traffickers, but they do not arrest them, under the argument that “they fled and abandoned the money.”
According to an investigation of DW, only in the first semester of 2020, for example, the Nicaraguan Police seized 10.5 million dollars during 16 operations but only seized 320 kilos of cocaine.
The problem is better seen if you take into account that, between 2007 and 2009 the Police of the regime seized 36,000 kilos of cocaine and ten years later, between 2017 and 2019, the amount dropped to 16,000 kilos, according to police statistics.
The consequences are noted in the fact that the Honduran authorities, neighbors to the north, have reported more drug seizures in recent years, which necessarily passed through Nicaragua.
In January 2024, for example, the Federal Customs Service of Russia reported on the occupation of more than a ton of cocaine coming from Nicaragua, which has shipped from the port of Corinto.
A month before, in December 2023, Panamanian authorities denounced a load of hidden drugs in a container coming from Nicaragua and headed to European countries.
Refuge of narcos
In February 2022 the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, was arrested after the United States asked the Honduran authorities for the extradition of the former president, identified as a drug trafficker by the justice system of that country.
According to different news reports, Hernández, who had become a very close friend to Ortega, was going to flee to Nicaragua, to be protected by the Nicaraguan dictator, but he did not leave in time.
Ortega also has been identified as protecting terrorists and other criminals on Nicaraguan territory, among them drug traffickers, in exchange for money.
For example, in September 2023 it gave refuge to Óscar Chincilla, former attorney general of Honduras, investigated by the Honduran legislative assembly to determine why he decided not to fight high impact cases connected to corruption and drug-trafficking, as the Honduras research magazine Contra Corriente published.
