In the midst of a series of diplomatic changes in Nicaragua’s foreign policy, the Daniel Ortega regime dismissed Helio Montenegro Díaz as a member of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Nicaragua (BCN). Montenegro was one of four private sector representatives since June 2021, including Leonardo Torres.
Presidential agreement No. 55-2022, published in La Gaceta, Official Gazette No. 64, on Monday, April 4, 2022, the dictator orders “to nullify the appointment of Comrade Helio César Montenegro Díaz as proprietary member of the Board of Directors of the Central Bank of Nicaragua.
Related news: Nicaraguan dictatorship orders the closure of Conimipyme and Uhispam, linked to Leonardo Torres
Despite the onslaught of the regime against Torres with the cancellation of the legal personality of the Association Hispanic college (Uhispam) and the Nicaraguan Council for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (Conimipyme), the Nicaraguan dictatorship maintains him as a member of the Board of Directors of the BCN, according to the bank’s website and the 2021 Annual Report.
Montenegro was president of the state Bank for the Promotion of Production (BFP), is part of the Editorial Board of Confidencial, founder of the American University (UAM) and American College; He was a Minister Counselor of the Nicaraguan Embassy in Germany and a magistrate of the Superior Council of the Comptroller General of the Republic of Nicaragua.
The assumption of Leonardo Torres as a member of the Board of Directors of the BCN came in mid-2018, in the midst of a sociopolitical crisis that led to the fracture of the corporatist model that supported the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep) and the Daniel Ortega regime. Torres came to occupy the chair vacated by the then president of Cosep, José Adán Aguerri, current political prisoner of the Ortega-Murillo dictatorship.
In mid-November 2021, it was reported that Leonardo Torres was not allowed to leave Nicaragua. Immigration and Immigration officials took his passport from him at the Managua airport. He to date he has not given his version of events. With this, the businessman joined the list of government officials and opponents that the dictatorship has declared a de facto immigration restriction.
The businessman has minimized the loss of jobs in the country and the closure of companies in statements to official media, in addition to praising the handling of the pandemic by the dictatorship. We tried to communicate with the Sandinista businessman, but at the close of this edition we did not receive a response to our messages and calls to his telephone number.
