The former president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), Michael Healy, and his former vice president, Álvaro Vargas, both political prisoners, were found guilty by the justice of the Ortega regime in a hermetic trial, held between Thursday, April 28 and Friday, April 29 in the Directorate of Judicial Assistance (DAJ), El Chipote.
The Prosecutor’s Office requested nine years in prison for Vargas for “undermining national integrity” and 13 years for Healy, for “conspiracy to undermine national integrity.”
Ángel Jeancarlos Fernández González, fourth criminal district court judge in Managua, was in charge of the trial against the former Cosep representatives, whose conditions during these six months in prison are unknown. The same judicial sentenced the civic leaders and prisoners of conscience: Dora María Téllez, José Antonio Peraza, Medardo Mairena, Pedro Mena and Víctor Hugo Tinoco.
Healy and Vargas are the last prisoners of conscience of some thirty social, civic, student and peasant leaders to be prosecuted and convicted, mainly for “conspiracy” and “propagation of false news.” All of them were captured in the repressive wave of 2021, in the context of the general votes that lacked political competition.
Healy was arrested by the Police on October 21, 2021, shortly after leaving the Public Ministry, where he had been summoned. His stay in the Prosecutor’s Office was short, about ten minutes because the appointment was rescheduled, he told journalists, who insisted on knowing the position of Cosep due to the intensification of the repression with the arbitrary arrests of civic and political leaders, in addition to his position individual about the risk of being detained.
Meanwhile, the former president of the Union of Agricultural Producers of Nicaragua (Upanic), Álvaro Javier Vargas Duarte, was arrested at his home.
Last January 27, Cosep ruled in favor of a national dialogue “without preconditions”, joining the demand for the freedom of all prisoners of conscience and the annulment of political trials, expressed in a statement by their families.
Private sector sources revealed in January to CONFIDENTIAL that the current president of COSEP, César Zamora, told the presidents of chambers in the session prior to the disclosure of his statement, that “we have to talk about negotiation, dialogue, I find everything because of three friends who are desperate and we owe each other them”. However, in the document released by the employers there was no reference to the words of the executive of the energy sector.
In the October 21 statement from the Public Ministry, it was pointed out that Healy and Vargas would be investigated for the crime of laundering money, goods and assets and other illicit acts and for having failed to comply with Law 1055 or the Sovereignty Law. However, a COSEP official reported that on Friday, January 21, Enrique Genie, lawyer for the politically imprisoned businessmen, was surprised at the trial hearing when he verified that the charge of money laundering against his clients was no longer there.
With the guilty verdict of Healy and Vargas, 55 people accused by the Ortega regime are completed, all of them captured in 2021. Of the 30 prisoners of conscience who remain in Chipote, they are the only ones awaiting sentencing. The same thing happens with the former diplomat and prisoner of conscience, Edgard Parrales, who is in jail at home.
In addition to Healy and Vargas, the regime has already condemned the former president of Cosep, José Adán Aguerri, and the banker Luis Rivas Anduray, executive president of Banpro.
