Former Nicaraguan magistrate Roberto Rivas, president of the Supreme Electoral Council from 2000 to 2018, died this Saturday at the age of 67, according to local media reports.
Rivas had been hospitalized since October 2021 in a private hospital in Managua due to post-COVID-19 conditions.
The controversial magistrate was one of the first officials in Nicaragua to be sanctioned by the US government in December 2017 based on the Global Magnitsky Law.
Washington accused Rivas of being responsible for or complicit in perpetrating electoral fraud to guarantee the continuity of Daniel Ortega in power “undermining Nicaragua’s electoral institutions,” but also accused him of accumulating wealth “above the law.”
In 2011, Rivas defended the re-election of President Daniel Ortega and said that it was in accordance with the Law. He also defended the president from the questions of opponents who said that he was seeking to perpetuate himself in power.
“What the anti-democratic sectors point to as irregularities in the elections, but in the majority they are manipulations of reality, without any relevance,” Rivas said in the 2011 elections where Ortega won more than 60% of the votes.
Journalistic investigations revealed the riches of Rivas during the course he served as electoral magistrate.
In Costa Rica, for example, Rivas was president of a corporation that owned four houses in a luxurious condominium where three of his children and two of Daniel Ortega’s children lived, reported the newspaper La Nación.
They also accused Rivas of exercising influence peddling to evade taxes in Nicaragua.
Rivas was removed from his position as electoral president in 2018, five months after being sanctioned by the US, although the Nicaraguan Parliament, with its ruling party majority, had reduced the functions of the hierarch, keeping him in his position.
Until this publication, no Nicaraguan official has referred to the death of Rivas.
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