The president of Nicaragua, Daniel Ortega, presented this Monday to Congress a bill to increase control over banks and empower the government to annul appointments, dismiss directors and control capital flows.
The “Law of administration of the monetary and financial system” gives the Superintendency of Banks, an entity controlled by the government, the supervision of the private banking system in the country, with the capacity to intervene in the institutions.
The text contemplates that the Superintendency can “declare without legal value and without corporate and legal effects the appointments of the directors, general manager or main executive, and of the internal auditor of financial institutions” for “reasons that it determines,” says the text.
The text also provides that he has the power to dismiss senior officials of banking entities “for serious infractions committed in the exercise of their functions,” but it does not detail them either.
Furthermore, a bank that wants to make “any capital contribution or share capital transfer” must obtain authorization from the Superintendency, which will supervise “the lawful origin of the resources,” the rule indicates.
It is taken for granted that the project will be approved by the National Assembly, controlled by the ruling party, and adds to another series of reforms recently designed by Ortega to increase political, economic and social control in Nicaragua.
Since the anti-government protests of 2018, which according to the UN left more than 300 dead, the United States, Canada and the European Union have imposed sanctions on hundreds of officials and public entities in Nicaragua, whom they accuse of supporting the government in rights violations. humans.
Ortega, a 79-year-old former guerrilla who governed Nicaragua in the 1980s after the triumph of the Sandinista revolution, has remained in power since 2007 after three disputed re-elections, the last of them in 2021 in elections with opposition leaders imprisoned or in exile.
