Through the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), the United States Department of the Treasury applied new sanctions to the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, accused of “manipulating the gold sector and making illegal money with migration” .
Nicaraguan opposition activists consider that these restrictions applied to the Training Center of the Russian Ministry of the Interior in Managuato the International Mining Company (COMINTSA) and the company Capital Mining Investment Nicaragua (Capital Mining), key entities linked to the oppressive regime, represent “a significant step towards the restoration of justice and dignity in Nicaragua.”
Related news: Capital Mining: Laureano Ortega Murillo’s mining company, sanctioned for carrying out “corrupt operations”
In a video published on the social network X, the former ambassador of Nicaragua to the Organization of American States (OAS), Arturo McFields, He indicated that the new sanctions are “hitting the pocket of the dictatorship, by touching the mining sector.”
The diplomat described that the illegal mining of the Nicaraguan dictatorship is “blood gold, polluting, that destroys the environment and contaminates rivers with mercury.”
“All the dirty businesses of the dictatorship are hit and that is what hurts the most, because the only thing that the dictatorship respects is finances,” he said.
The economist and political prisoner Juan Sebastian Chamorro He also agreed that “the sanctions on mining companies are aimed precisely at cutting off the economic resources that the dictatorship is receiving through this important gold sector.”
The political activist highlighted that the Treasury points to Laureano Ortega Murillo, nicknamed “El Chigüín” within the opposition, as “the person behind these companies, where it is also known that he is in the hands of the powerful Minister of Energy and Mines.”
The United States, in this battery of sanctions against Nicaragua, accused it of doing business with migration, and issued an alert to warn airlines to avoid being complicit “in the exploitation of migrants.”
With less than six months left until the presidential elections, President Joe Biden is trying to tackle the migration crisis from all fronts and Nicaragua is one of them.
Migrants are increasingly crossing the region, using Managua as a disembarkation point to continue the journey north by land.
This has led the Biden administration to issue an alert to notify airlines, charter operators, travel agents and service providers about the ways in which migrant smuggling networks exploit transportation services to facilitate irregular migration. . .
In a statement, the State Department accuses President Daniel Ortega and his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, of having devised “permissive immigration policies” that have made it easier for the networks to “exploit migrants with financial fines and encourage dangerous irregular trips to the southwestern border of the United States” with Mexico.
Another 250 officials of the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo were unvisited by the United States Department of State, the North American entity reported. This is a complementary measure to the sanctions imposed on a Russian training center that operates in the Central American country and two mining companies.
Among those newly sanctioned with the restriction of entry to the United States are members of the National Police, Nicaraguan Army, prison officials, prosecutors, judges of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ), higher education officials and certain non-governmental actors.
Related news: Biden government sanctions a Russian training center that operates from Nicaragua
The North American entity points out that this new batch of officials, sanctioned with the cancellation of visas, is for “supporting the Ortega-Murillo regime in its attacks on human rights and fundamental freedoms, the repression of civil society organizations and its exploitation of vulnerable migrants.
From November 2021 to mid-May 2024, Joe Biden’s Presidential Proclamation has restricted the visas of more than 1,400 Nicaraguan officials who “threaten democracy” in the Central American country and are “complicit in human rights violations and practices.” corrupt.”
“Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, Vice President Rosario Murillo and those under their command continue to unjustly detain those who bravely advocate for a free society, freedom of religion and freedom of expression,” says the official US note. .
