The United States expanded sanctions against presidential adviser Néstor Moncada Lau, one of the closest collaborators of the presidential couple, by punishing his entire family – wife and children – on Thursday, December 9, pointing out that they were allegedly involved in fraud activities. customs and corrupt operations.
Moncada Lau was already sanctioned by the United States on November 27, 2018, along with Rosario Murillo, for alleged “responsibility” and “complicity” with the “serious” human rights abuses in Nicaragua, as a result of the official repression unleashed by the Ortega regime that year against the citizen protests of April this year.
“Néstor Moncada Lau, national security adviser to the Nicaraguan Ortega-Murillo regime, is appointed for incurring significant corruption by accepting monetary bribes in exchange for using his control over Nicaraguan tax and customs authorities to allow and perpetuate a scheme of Customs and import fraud to enrich the members of the Ortega-Murillo regime, ”says the State Department report on Thursday, December 9.
“Moncada’s wife, Lydia Vargas de Moncada, and the children Claudia Vanessa Moncada Solís, Ernesto David Moncada Solís, Allan Roberto Moncada Vargas, Néstor José Moncada Vargas and Lidia Mercedes Moncada Vargas are also designated under this action,” the document details.
Links with Customs
The designation of Moncada Lau and his entire family is made according to the Department of State, based on Section 7031 of the Department of State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Appropriations Act of 2021.
“Under this authority, the secretary will deny entry to the United States to foreign government officials involved in significant corruption and their immediate family members,” the statement said. The designations made this Thursday by the Treasury Department are in the framework of the International Day Against Corruption 2021.
According to a Moncada Lau’s profile published by the portal Connectas In January 2021, a brother of the presidential advisor, Óscar, is the Director of Customs in Managua and one of his sons, Ernesto David (who was hit by the sanctions) is Inspector General of the Directorate of Migration and Foreigners.
Moncada lau He is one of the Ortega officials most sanctioned by the international community. In addition to the US, sanctions have been imposed by the European Union, Canada, United Kingdom and Switzerland. The sanctions consist of the prohibition of travel to those territories and the freezing of assets in them.
Espionage and blackmail operations
In 2018, the United States Department of the Treasury detailed that Moncada Lau was sanctioned for “acting on behalf of Vice President Murillo or on her behalf.” In addition, “he is a former official with experience of the State Security of the Ministry of the Interior, with strong ties of loyalty to Ortega and Murillo.”
“Moncada disbursed payments to counter protesters against Ortega and Murillo and, through his various intelligence roles, worked to bribe and blackmail individuals to gain their support or prevent them from expressing their opposition to the Ortega government. In addition, Moncada has committed acts of corruption on behalf of Ortega and Murillo. In at least one case, Moncada worked with President Ortega to cover up Ortega’s sexual conduct with a minor, ”details the Treasury.
Moncada Lau (“Chema”) is the custodian of the FSLN General Secretariat and the number one political operator of the regime. Lawyer and experienced former official of the State Security of the Ministry of the Interior, with strong ties of loyalty towards Ortega and Murillo, is the link of the couple with the Police and paramilitary groups, headed by the Secretary General of the Mayor’s Office of Managua, Fidel Dark.
In November 1980, Moncada Lau participated in the operation that killed businessman Jorge Salazar Argüello, president of the Union of Agricultural Producers of Nicaragua (Upanic) and vice president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep).
The report The rings of power and the operators of Ortega and Murillo, published in 2017 by CONFIDENTIAL, reports that Moncada Lau infiltrated Salazar’s conspiratorial group, citing the businessman at the old Esso gas station in El Crucero, to carry out a transfer of weapons, when a patrol from the Ministry of the Interior appeared and shot and killed Salazar.
Arrested and prosecuted, as part of the same plot to publicly denounce the scope of the plot, Moncada Lau was later sent to a period of “cooling off” in Cuba, where he received training in intelligence and counterintelligence courses.
Two years later, he returned to Nicaragua, first as an Army Military Intelligence officer, and then he was assigned to the Economic Directorate of the National Police, and finally to the Public Security Directorate, until in 1992 he retired with the rank of Subcommander. .
Retired from military life, Moncada Lau was linked to Commander Ortega’s private environment in the FSLN Secretariat. In the mid-nineties, he was on the list of suspects investigated by the National Police, to clarify the wave of twelve terrorist attacks that shook the Catholic churches, without producing human victims.
On January 10, 1997, hours before former President Arnoldo Alemán took office, he was detained by the National Police when he was transporting four blocks of TNT explosives. Sentenced to eighteen months in prison for terrorism, Judge Sergio Palacios granted him conditional release “on the grounds that he had had good conduct in previous years.”
The return of Ortega and the rise of Moncada
With Ortega’s return to power in 2007, Moncada Lau assumed a prominent role as the president’s liaison with the head of the National Police, Aminta Granera. All orders from Ortega to Granera and the Minister of the Interior, Ana Isabel Morales, would be channeled through Moncada Lau, who had a decisive impact on the political redesign of the National Police, the selection of professional officers who would go into retirement and the promotion of cadres aligned by their loyalty to the Secretary General of the FSLN.
Its scope of action as an operator of power extends to the Ministry of the Interior (Migob), the General Directorate of Migration and Immigration (DGME), the General Directorate of Revenues (DGI) and the General Directorate of Customs (DGA).
In April 2011, an investigation by the Directorate of Investigations of the National Police into irregularities in the General Directorate of Revenues, led to the dismissal of its owner, Walter Porras, and incidentally, it facilitated the fall of Colonel Lenin Cerna from his position as organizational secretary of the FSLN.
Cerna separated from his duties and the incidence of his own network of operators weakened, Moncada Lau became the sole political authority in the FSLN Secretariat. He does not hold an official position nor does he appear on the government’s organization chart, but no one disputes his descent into power as guardian of the private affairs of the presidential family.
Frictions with Murillo
However, Moncada Lau gradually lost strength under Rosario Murillo’s push. An investigation of CONFIDENTIAL named Changes in the “iron circle” of El Carmen He explained how the power dynamics imposed by Murillo removed the exclusivity of Moncada Lau as a direct link with the headquarters of the National Police.
The outbreak of the crisis in April 2018 meant for Moncada Lau to see his exclusive role interfered with in front of the National Police Headquarters. At the height of the socio-political crisis, and overwhelmed by Murillo, Sandinista sources assured that Moncada Lau devised with Ortega the establishment of a version of the defunct Ministry of the Interior to carry out intelligence and political espionage tasks outside the Police.
