The Attorney General’s Office (PGR), at the service of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship, reported on May 17, with a high dose of cynicism, that confiscation does not exist in Nicaragua and that all properties “stolen” from opponents, to the Church and NGOs, are “recoveries” in favor of the State and restitutions in favor of the people of Nicaragua.
In a press release released on Friday afternoon, the PGR notified that “as legal representative of the State” it informs Nicaraguans that “the State reiterates its strict compliance with respect for private property, in accordance with the provisions of “Article 44, last paragraph, of our Political Constitution, which prohibits the confiscation of property.”
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Consequently, the institution that serves as “state lawyer”; but who has become one of the greatest repressive agents of the dictatorship, assures that “the State has been transferred and has legally recovered, for the Nicaraguan people, properties derived from criminal proceedings for drug trafficking, money laundering; for the commission of crimes against citizen security, sovereignty, peace and the good life of Nicaraguan families.
He adds that other properties have been passed to the State as a result of administrative resolutions “due to non-compliance with the legislation that regulates Non-Profit Organizations (NPOs).” Furthermore, he maintains that in these cases “what has prevailed is the restitution of the State over properties that individuals improperly used through legal subterfuges.”
That response was given after the Pro Transparency and Anticorruption Observatory (OPTA), of the Hagamos Democracia organization, in alliance with the investigative journalist Wilfredo Miranda Aburto, prepared a report about “the tip of the iceberg” of the illegal confiscations of property and real estate, belonging to opponents, which were carried out by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The work reveals that with the beginning of this new “piñata” the Sandinista dictatorship has stolen, according to the first calculations, some 250 million dollars, although this figure is only the beginning of a debt that “continues to increase” and that all “Nicaraguans will have to pay in the future.”
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The investigation claims that this is only “the tip of the iceberg” of the new confiscations because so far only 36 cases of official robberies have been documented, totaling 78 properties with a total value of almost 18 million dollars, which were stolen from critics of the government.
The majority of these properties are located in Managua and represent personal and vacation homes, land, farms and commercial modules. Many of them have been transferred to state entities such as the National Social Security Institute (INSS) and the National Technological Institute (INATEC).
Since 2018, the Ortega-Murillo regime has closed 3,494 NGOs, especially after passing the Foreign Agents Law in October 2020. As of April 2024, according to the OPTA investigation, they have confiscated 41 properties from 30 organizations, with a total value of approximately of 8.4 million dollars.
In the case of private companies, the dictatorship canceled 35 chambers and business associations, including the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (COSEP), whose headquarters valued at $500,000 were confiscated. The report also includes confiscations from universities and the Catholic Church.
However, even with all this evidence, the PGR indicates in its statement that, “based on article 4 of our Political Constitution, referring to the individual rights, duties and guarantees of the Nicaraguan people, the properties that have been transferred and returned to the State have been allocated for the benefit of our population.
