More than three months after the cancellation of the inauguration of CABEI’s new headquarters in Managua, scheduled for mid-December 2021, the vice president and spokeswoman for the Ortega regime, Rosario Murillo, announced this Monday, March 14, that the work will be opened this week.
The inauguration of the six-story building, built at a cost of 16.5 million dollars, was canceled last decemberwith a majority vote of at least ten of the partners (Guatemala, El Salvador, Costa Rica, Panama, Dominican Republic, Spain, Mexico, Taiwan, and South Korea, plus the joint vote of Argentina and Colombia).
A source from the Bank, who spoke with CONFIDENTIAL On condition of anonymity, he recalled that at the end of last year “there was a request for its inauguration, but it was said that the building was not ready, and that it could not be received,” thus citing the official excuse that the regime gave for not recognizing , in public, the defeat inflicted on them by the partners of the regional financial institution.
In his customary solo speech this Monday, Murillo said that they were “…also ready for this week to inaugurate the new building of the Central American Bank for Economic Integration in our Nicaragua, and to receive the directors, the brother president Dante Mossi, of that bank so important for our Mesoamerican region.”
Four absent countries
The source said he was convinced that neither the Dominican Republic, Panama, or Costa Rica (all three, members of the Alliance for Development in Democracy), nor Taiwan, will attend the opening ceremony, convinced of the mistake of putting the Bank’s authorities in the same photo, with Daniel Ortega and his wife, Mrs. Murillo, since the Government that both lead is the product of a flawed electoral process.
Prior to the postponed inauguration in December, it was planned that the meeting of directors would also be held in Managua, coinciding with the protocol ceremony, but when deciding that the building would not be inaugurated on that date, they agreed to have their meeting virtually, having Tegucigalpa as headquarters.
The previous meeting summoned the directors to meet physically between November 26 and 27 in the Dominican Republic.
Shortly after, nine CABEI directors (Argentina, Spain, Colombia, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Honduras, El Salvador, Mexico and Panama), wrote a letter to the governors of that institutionto express “deep concern about the Bank’s management and financial parameters, and the serious concerns raised about its proper governance.”
CONFIDENTIAL learned that this challenge process has not yet concluded, but that its outcome depends on regional political dynamics, where the position assumed by the government of the president of Honduras, Xiomara Castro, who assumed last january 27.
CABEI has become the main source of resources for the Ortega and Murillo dictatorship, to whom had approved loans for almost 2.3 billion dollars between January 2017 and June 2021, to which other sums are added, such as almost 24 million dollars approved to buy vaccines against covid – 19.
