The Mayor’s Office of Rivas, under the control of the governing Sandinista Front since 2008, has been beheaded since last week, when it was intervened by the Directorate of Economic Investigations of the Police and the Municipal Development Institute (INIFOM), according to sources linked to the investigation.
Mayor Wilfredo López Hernández, a local FSLN leader who supported enthusiasm for the project of the failed interoceanic canal in 2014, is suspended from his post, while the investigation is carried out, according to sources from the mayor’s office. Instead, the main officials of his administration: the manager Doyler Balmaceda, the head of planning Martha Hernández, the director of projects Ernesto Barrios, and the legal adviser of the institution Carlos Molina, were forced to resign from their positions.
López Hernández answered a phone call last night from CONFIDENTIAL, but immediately fell silent when the journalistic team identified themselves and asked him about the crisis in the municipality. The investigation would be focused on alleged acts of corruption related to the business of the mayor and other officials, taking advantage of their public positions. In particular, the overvaluation of the “Casas para el Pueblo Bismarck Martínez” project, which has not yet been inaugurated, and the registration of properties in the name of third parties, as well as the remodeling project of the city park, in which presumes a diversion of funds of more than two million córdobas.
Amid the secrecy that the FSLN is accustomed to, the municipal intervention in this mayor’s office in the south of the country sparked a series of speculations about the possibility that López Hernández was detained and under surveillance. However, two sources confirmed that he is free and explained that it is likely that he will be replaced by whoever the presidential couple designates, a decision that will be joined in chorus by supporters of the FSLN and its allies.
The former opposition councilor of Rivas, Josué Vargas, currently in exile, said that, at the end of January 2022, he learned that the Municipal Council of Rivas met in an extraordinary manner to approve the closing of the municipal budget of expenses and income for 2021, but no issue related to López Hernández, whom he met personally when he was part of the Municipal Council between 2012 and 2017, was addressed.
According to Vargas’s version, López was separated de facto directly by the Executive when the Council as the highest local authority should have done so. “He is dismissed and all the high positions are suspended,” said this opponent, who was informed that on the last Friday of February there will be a new municipal session in which details of what happened will be known. Nobody currently knows anything about it, apart from those involved and the authorities that intervened in the local management.
However, the former councilor characterized the mayor’s administrative management as not very transparent, because he had eliminated the bidding processes, his office had an assigned budget of two million to three million córdobas and López Hernández’s salary was very high, although he did not specified the figure.
“One of the requirements is that the projects go to tender and with “Wil” López he began to lose that. He appointed the company that was going to carry out the projects and what was approved was not what actually existed,” said former councilor Vargas.
Judge interrogated in “El Chipote”
The other corruption scandal that is shaking the FSLN in Rivas directly affects Judge Ileana Pérez, president of the Civil Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ), close to President Daniel Ortega, and in charge of the southern constituency that corresponds to the departments of Granada and Rivas.
Police sources confirmed that Pérez was interrogated on Friday, February 4, at the Judicial Assistance Directorate known as El Chipote, for the case of a property that in the past belonged to a drug trafficker and ended up in the hands of a brother of the official, the judge. civil law in Rivas, Emilio Chan López.
The property, located in Cruz de Monte San Juan 1/2c to the north, in the municipality of Rivas, was confiscated from the drug trafficker Luis Medina Amorettikilled by hitmen in Costa Rica during 2014.
In August 2021, Rivas’s property registrar, Pedro Muñoz Carranza, was removed from his position for refusing to participate in acts prohibited by law, such as registering the former narco’s property in the name of private individuals. Judge Pérez replaced Muñoz with Jeiner Alexander Herrera Condega, who several months later registered the property in the name of Rivas Judge Emilio Chan López, brother of the magistrate.
Last week the Police carried out a raid on the property registered in the name of the judge, and upon finding a figure greater than 200 thousand dollars in cash, they began an investigation.
Judge Chan, Judge Pérez, and Registrar Herrera were questioned at the Judicial Assistance Directorate, but none of the three are in custody.
So far, despite the fact that the complaint about the magistrate’s actions has been anticipated by the channel 100% News and other media, neither the police nor the Supreme Court of Justice have ruled on the investigation. Pérez also did not answer his cell phone when CONFIDENTIAL tried to locate it.
“The roll is quite large, the explanations they gave about a large amount of money that they found in the judge’s house are not known,” said the source who explained that the Mayor’s Office of Rivas – under investigation for the administrative affairs of mayor Wilfredo López Hernández— issued the cadastral certificates to facilitate the transfer of the property in favor of Judge Pérez’s brother.
Despite the seriousness of the events, sources linked to the FSLN ruled out that the investigation could have greater consequences for Judge Pérez, who “has the support and protection of President Ortega” or for her brother, who is in the process of being transferred to another department to fill another position.
Judge Pérez is a civil servant with a judicial career, loyal to the FSLN and Daniel Ortega, known for ruling in 2002 against former President Arnoldo Alemán Lacayo (1997-2001) in a case for a fraud of 1.3 million dollars against the state television Channel 6.
