Former employees of the Prisa Pawn Shop, raided on August 15 by the Daniel Ortega regime, denounce that none of them have been paid their liquidation. Most of them are currently unemployed and with a career of more than eight years in the company for which they have not been given a penny.
“They have not made settlement payments to any of them, the Mitrab (Ministry of Labor) makes an appointment for labor courts and in the end they cancel the appointment for nonsense. There are approximately 150 workers who are claiming, ranging from cleaning to branch manager. The Mitrab is boleting us and extending the dates of the trials,” denounced one of the workers to Article 66.
Related news: Riot police take over the 38 branches of Casa de Empeños Prisa, the largest in the country
“The owner has been in Mexico for years and we don’t know anything about him. He does not speak or say anything about our payments. In any case, everything occupied is in the hands of the Police or the government… We don’t have what to do because if they have everything, who is going to pay us?
Police raided 38 company branches last August. The owner of Prisa, Mario Hurtado, said at the time that the Police also raided his house in the municipality of Ticuantepe and arrested the manager of the company that was based in Managua. “We do not know the reasons,” he stressed.
“They took the computers, they changed the passwords of the communication system between branches,” said the businessman, assuring that he did not know the reasons for the raid but noting that a client of the company told him that he was being investigated for money laundering.
Hurtado was sentenced in 2014 for usury. He was imprisoned for six months and was released, according to him, because a friend interceded with the dictator Daniel Ortega to get him released. “Since then I have not gotten involved in politics,” said the businessman linked to Sandinismo in the past and former adviser to the PLC, before Ortega returned to power in 2007.
Hurtado said that the company exported between 80,000 and 100,000 dollars to the United States every four months and denied that it had other partners. He assured that Prisa is a family business where he is the only partner, ruling out being linked to political actors or FSLN representatives.
