The Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep) renewed its Board of Directors, keeping Michael Healy, imprisoned since October 2021, in the presidency. In the same session, the hitherto first vice president, Álvaro Vargas (arrested the same day), was replaced than Healy), by César Zamora, who assumed the presidency of the entity at the end of October, after both were captured by the regime’s police.
The decision to keep Healy as president, “sends a message that he is only absent, and by putting his name it is being said that he is a political prisoner, because if he were for a common crime, he would act in another way”, said to CONFIDENTIAL a member of that Board of Directors, who preferred to remain anonymous.
By doing so “it is also saying that he is innocent, because when someone is guilty, and even more so if he is already in prison, it is understood that he has all his political rights suspended, which would inhibit him from being president of Cosep, but by recognizing him as such , we are defending his innocence”, he reiterated.
According to the note issued by Cosep, in the renewal of the Board of Directors, held this Wednesday, September 28, Zamora was elected as first vice president (he was the second vice president, but he had to take over after Healy and Vargas were arrested), while Scott Vaughn, president of the Nicaraguan Association of the Textile and Clothing Industry (Anitec), was appointed second vice president.
The list is completed by the president of the National Chamber of Telecommunications (Canitel), Evess Yasmín Ruiz García, in the third vice presidency; the executive director of Anitec, Dean García, in the secretariat of the business leadership; with the director of the Chamber of Energy, the lawyer Reynaldo Antonio Gómez González, as treasurer, and the former president of Cosep, Ramiro Gurdián Ortiz, as prosecutor.
Detailing that “in this special session, Mr. César Zamora Hinojos took over as acting president,” the union explained that “this procedure was ratified in accordance with the provisions of Cosep’s statutes, which establish that in the absence of its elected president (Michael Healy), is the first vice president who assumes his position”, which will expire within a year.
The imprisoned directors
Both Healy and Vargas, who had been elected in September 2020suffered two spurious trials, in which they were sentenced: Vargas, to nine years in prison for “undermining national integrity” and Healy to thirteen years for “conspiracy to undermine national integrity”.
After almost a decade in which the highest business union enjoyed unlimited access to Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, to the point that they could have a privileged influence on the law-making process in the National Assembly, the relationship was broken when the businessmen who made up the entity, complained to the Government for the killing of citizens who protested in the streets during the April Rebellion.
Since then, in addition to arrest the former president of the entityJose Adam Aguerri, or to the banker Luis Rivaswho at that time was executive president of Banpro, the dictatorship imposed a tax reformin addition to another to social security; confiscated companiesclosed organizations, and closed eventswhile holding a permanent fiscal harassment which is mainly aimed against the largest companies, from which it can extract more money.
