Sources linked to the Sandinista Front in San Juan del Sur confirmed the arrest by the Police of former Sandinista mayor Gerardo Miranda on Monday, March 27, who was transferred to the Directorate of Judicial Assistance, known as El Chipote.
The sources said they were unaware of the reason why the Police are investigating former FSLN deputy Gerardo Miranda, and neither have the Police or the Public Ministry issued any communication about his capture, which was confirmed by relatives of Miranda.
At the time of your arrest, Miranda did not hold any public office in the State, nor in the party structures of the Sandinista Front. Miranda was associated with the group of former members of State Security in the 1980s, Lenín Cerna, Vicente Chávez, and Rodolfo Castillo (“Payín”) who were ousted from the FSLN secretariat in El Carmen in 2011, in a struggle with Rosario Murillo and Nestor Moncada Lau.
Operator of the extortion scandal in Tola
In June 2007 the television program This week He presented a recording in which an operator of the Presidency of the Republic linked to a legal office that worked in the Presidential House in charge of the former heads of State Security Lenín Cerna and Vicente Chávez is heard extorting.
The voice of the recording corresponded to former deputy Gerardo Miranda, who asked for four million dollars from businessman Armel González Muhs, to free him from obstacles that a cooperative was putting on the tourism project Tola Sands or sands bay that it developed with foreign investors to build 60 luxury houses.
In the recording, Miranda, who was already serving as Nicaraguan consul in Liberia, asked the investor to make a “good proposal to the FSLN”, after rejecting a first offer from investors that consisted of the delivery of land valued at $500,000. .
“We can negotiate with about four million dollars (…) and they take care of it,” Miranda told the investor, alluding to the ruling Sandinista party.
The case mobilized the entire state apparatus. The Supreme Electoral Council, the Supreme Court of Justice, the National Assembly, the Comptroller’s Office, the Prosecutor’s Office and the Executive Branch, through President Daniel Ortega, the Attorney General’s Office and the Marena, actively participated in the process in defense of the accused of extortion.
In 2016, González was quoted in the propaganda media of the dictatorship, as a businessman who planned to build a medical clinic building next to the ‘Vivian Pellas’ Metropolitan Hospital, as well as another building to rent commercial sections in the Oriental market, in Managua.
Controversial former FSLN mayor of San Juan del Sur
In 2001, after leaving the Mayor’s Office of San Juan del Sur, Miranda was accused of violating the Law of Municipalities by “donating” more than 50 manzanas of ejido land belonging to the Mayor’s Office, although it is prohibited to donate or sell municipal assets, according to a journalistic investigation by newspaper La Prensa.
Article 43 of the Law of Municipalities establishes that municipal public assets are inalienable, that is, they cannot be donated or sold.
However, Miranda justified his actions by pointing out that the donations were made to ratify the titles that the Agrarian Reform Institute had delivered in the 1980s.
The “piñata” that was held in the Mayor’s Office of San Juan del Sur with municipal land also benefited the son of former mayor Miranda, Luis Miranda Mena, who received a 1,707.72-square-meter lot as a “donation.”
“Those were powers of the Council, not only of the mayor, the Council is the one that authorizes,” Miranda said when questioned about the “donations” authorized during his administration.
According to one investigation of The New Journal During the Miranda period, the commune lost 235 properties, more than 20 million córdobas in cadastral value that will never enter its finances, because the former Sandinista officials distributed them among council members, relatives and friends.
Miranda was elected mayor of San Juan del Sur for the period 1997-2001, but since he was running for deputy candidate, he resigned a year before his term.
A special audit carried out by the Comptroller General of the Republic (CGR) to the Mayor’s Office of San Juan del Sur ordered the annulment of several of his donations, but exempted Miranda from responsibilities.
Scandal when he went to the PLC and came back saying he was “exploring”
In January 2006, in the midst of a tough fight for the presidency of the National Assembly, the Sandinistas suffered a severe setback with the change to the ranks of the Constitutional Liberal Party (PLC) of their deputy, Gerardo Miranda.
Miranda, deputy of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) for the department of Rivas, appeared by surprise seated in the seats corresponding to the PLC at the moment in which the Legislative Power was preparing to elect its new director.
However, on the night of January 9, 2006, Miranda, who was elected as a deputy for the FSLN, assured that his untimely abandonment of the Sandinista caucus was due to a “covert mission” by the Sandinista party to infiltrate the Liberal caucus.
The “revelation” was made by the general secretary of the FSLN, Daniel Ortega, after a meeting with the deputy, after a hectic day that frustrated the same parliamentary election.
The supposed “strategy” was not understood by the Sandinista parliamentarians, who one by one paraded through the parliamentary debate accusing Miranda of being a “traitor, corrupt, mafioso, as rotten as pus.”
Ortega justified these reactions by stating that the Sandinista deputies were not aware of the “special mission” and for that reason they reacted “in the heat of tensions.”
“These are normal strategies of any political force, in fact, like a journalistic investigation. If you’re going to do a journalistic investigation, you’re not going to burn your source. The journalist works with great secrecy to achieve his objective, otherwise he has no result. If you are going to tell everything, you are not going to achieve your goal,” said Ortega.
