A journalistic investigation that exposes how a couple of front men at the service of the Ortega-Murillo family were benefited by the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) with three million-dollar properties in the Nicaraguan Pacific, published in Article 66, Nicaragua Investiga and Radio Darío, will be presented at the Latin American Conference of Investigative Journalism (Colpin), which begins on October 22 in Madrid, Spain.
The investigation was carried out by the journalist Ismael Lopez last January and is the result of more than three years of journalistic work, compiling documents and speaking with government sources that helped us uncover this front man structure directly linked to the ruling family.
The series of three reports demonstrates how Ortega’s assistant, Javier Ernesto Morales Cuadraand his partner, Sonia Martínez Téllez – who also has a son with Rafael Ortega Murillo, were benefited from three properties on the coast of Tola, Rivas, one of the areas with the greatest added value in the Pacific due to its tourism potential.
The properties were sold months after the donation in lots, worth up to $3.2 million, for a dark businessman who confessed in an interview that he had bought the land from the front man.
Journalist Ismael López, now a refugee in the United States (when he carried out the investigation he was a refugee in Costa Rica), will present the investigation in Madrid at the panel titled “Presidents and Corruption,” along with other investigations on presidential corruption in El Salvador and Peru.
La Colpin is the most important investigative journalism event in Latin America, where the best Spanish-speaking investigations are presented. The jury is usually eminently technical and is made up of the best investigative journalists in Latin America.
The journalist López also presented in 2021 at the same Colpin, which was held virtually due to the COVID-19 pandemic, another investigation published in the Reuters news agency, about how the children of Ortega and Murillo took over the media. of communication and benefited from state advertising.
“It is the result of more than three years of research. It exposes, with public documents, the corruption, influence peddling and nepotism of the presidential family and how they manage Nicaragua like a farm,” López said.
“I am happy to have the opportunity to present the investigation, because journalists must respond to dictatorships, smear campaigns, manipulation and slander with journalism. There is no other way,” said López. The journalist, since the crisis broke out in 2018, has worked as a correspondent for foreign media.
This publication was disseminated as a work of journalistic alliance between Article 66, Nicaragua Investiga and Darío Medios, three digital platforms with great national impact, which, due to the persecution unleashed by the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, in Nicaragua, carry out their work from exile.
Álvaro Navarro, director of Article 66said upon learning that our investigation has moved on to the presentation stage at the Latin American Conference of Investigative Journalism, that “it is a great pride for us that the work we do is recognized by the best of international journalism, because that shows that “In Nicaragua, the media and journalists remain determined to continue monitoring and exposing corruption, and despite the risks, persecution, exile or any threat, we are not willing to back down.”
Likewise, he highlighted the effort “that the media makes to coordinate joint investigations, which seek to have greater reach and impact against the corrupt who plunder the money and natural resources of Nicaraguans.”
Read the three installments of the investigation:
I Delivery: PGR distributes millionaire properties in Tola to front men of the Ortega-Murillo family
II Delivery: They divide property donated to a front man and offer lots between 154,000 and 243,000 dollars
