The Vice President of the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ), Marvin Aguilar García, together with representatives of four other State institutions, accused the owner of the Prisa pawnshop —and three other companies— Mario Hurtado Jiménez, of crimes of “money laundering, tax fraud, and other crimes committed under the protection of said commercial entities.”
“The accused Mario Hurtado Jiménez is a fugitive from Justice, for which the (Nicaraguan) authorities requested international circulation through the Interpol Central Office,” Aguilar said.
Last August 15, Police agents invaded the headquarters plus the 38 branches of Prisataking its general manager, Óscar Durán, and other officials into custody, in addition to seizing computers, work equipment, and objects that were deposited as collateral for the loans granted by the company owned by Hurtado, a businessman of Mexican and Nicaraguan nationality.
Along with haste, The seven headquarters of Joyas Alicia SA were also invaded.who bought, polished and repaired silver jewelry to resell them, arresting the manager, Anielka Santamaría, loading in the process with “the jewelry that was ready to be sent to the clients, as well as work machines, money, checks, and computers,” Hurtado denounced at the time.
If in those days, the aggrieved party claimed his innocence, remarking that in the recent past he had never been the subject of a complaint or an investigation by any judicial authority, Judge Aguilar gave a twist to the official narrative, by becoming accompanied by officials from the Financial Analysis Unit (UAF), the National Police, the Public Ministry, and the Attorney General’s Office, to accuse Jiménez.
“The UAF identified repeated violations of the laws and regulations that regulate the obligated subjects, committed through the commercial companies Prisa, Decores, Joyas Alicia SA, and Apícola de Nicaragua, SA., all of these entities, owned by Mario Hurtado Jiménez ”, assured the judge of the Supreme.
Hurtado acknowledged that in the past he was linked to all these corporations, detailing that in 2007 he closed the microfinance company Decores SA, after Daniel Ortega said in a public act that in Nicaragua there would no longer be evictions due to mortgage debts. The Apinic beekeeping company also stopped operating many years ago, because “it was a micro-business that I started with my wife, but it didn’t work, so it’s closed.”
No presumption of innocence
Based on these “findings”, “the authorities of the National Police, in coordination with the Public Ministry, began an investigation process, through which sufficient elements of conviction were obtained to accuse on the date of August 17 of this year, to Mario Hurtado Jiménez, for the crimes of money laundering, tax fraud, and other crimes committed under the protection of said commercial entities,” Vargas reiterated.
He added that “as part of the timely intervention of the competent authorities, the four commercial companies used for money laundering and tax evasion were cancelled, through usurious loans, with which the defendant Mario Hurtado Jiménez also dispossessed his assets of the victims of their criminal acts”.
consulted by CONFIDENTIALthe affected person responded to the magistrate that “they can invent whatever they want… but if they say that they are investigating me for laundering, it seems perfect to me that they continue investigating, because the first thing is that it has to be ‘dirty’ money, from drug activity, corruption government, the use of false clients, or that we buy stolen things.”
Hurtado assured that all his clients are real. “We have their certificates in the files that support their guarantees. Haste has given 1.5 million credits, and they are all real. We had an audit management, to thoroughly audit all the documents, all the contracts. There is no possibility that there was money laundering, carried out with false contracts, ”he asserted.
He also denied that the company bought stolen goods. “That possibility does not exist, because for security, the pawnshops remain locked with a padlock; everything is recorded, the person has to identify himself with an ID, so the thieves do not go to a place like that to sell a stolen object: they sell it where they buy it quickly and without further formalities, ”he illustrated.
In reference to being considered “a fugitive from justice”, since it has been circulated to Interpol, he only replied that he is in a state of defenselessness, because “my lawyer is prohibited from talking to me”, and neither the Prosecutor’s Office nor the Nicaraguan Police have called him to ask him Or accuse him of anything.
On the contrary, he said that authorities from the Mexican Foreign Ministry requested information from the Aztec ambassador in Managua, so he is waiting for the diplomatic process to continue and for some kind of response.
“Right now there are 20,000 distressed customers, and I don’t know how they will be able to recover their things,” said Hurtado Jiménez, adding that “Prisa has debts with banks and private investors,” which it cannot deal with, because “they seized my accounts”.
