President Daniel Ortega on Wednesday appointed Bruno Mauricio Gallardo Palaviccine, 76, as the new Deputy Minister of Finance and Public Credit (MHCP), in charge of signing all the documents of the country’s public finances, according to presidential agreement 190 -2021.
Ortega explains, in the agreement, that Gallardo will have signing power for the “documents necessary for the disbursements of national and foreign funds and those derived from the execution of loan contracts, donations and other mechanisms of international financial cooperation.”
Gallardo assumes the functions of José Adrián Chavarría, of whom Ortega does not inform if he will continue in the Treasury or will be appointed in another position, after he was sanctioned by the United States and Canada, last Monday. The new vice minister is a teacher, he was president of the teachers’ union in Managua in 1968, and came to occupy the presidency of the National Association of Educators of Nicaragua between 1979 and 1981.
Chavarría is part of the Longest list of punished regime officials by the US Administration of Joseph Biden, in response to the electoral farce of November 7, including the Minister of Energy, Salvador Mansell; the Superintendent of Banks, Luis Ángel Montenegro; the director of the Nicaraguan Institute of Energy (INE), José Castañeda; and the manager of the Freight Office, Rodolfo López.
Acosta’s henchman
The public positions that Gallardo held, before his appointment as vice minister, reveal that he is a man of confidence of Minister Iván Acosta Montalván, also sanctioned by the United States and Canada.
When Acosta Montalván was sanctioned by the United States, in May 2020, Chavarría assumed the position of vice minister and Gallardo substituted to the minister in the representation of the shares of the State in the Distribuidora de Energía DISSNORTE and DISSUR, according to the agreement 46-2020.
Acosta named in addition to Gallardo, on June 17, 2020, as his “ex-official substitute” at the Instituto de Previsión Social Militar (IPSM), the financial arm of the Army, where the minister had a seat on the board of directors.
The appointment of Gallardo as deputy minister is the most immediate repercussion on Monday of sanctions in the United States, which were imposed in a coordinated manner with the United Kingdom and Canada, in order to hold the regime responsible for the votes carried out without political competition, and thanks to the which Ortega achieved a fourth consecutive period.
Since last May, the justice system under Ortega’s control has imprisoned 39 opponents, including political, civic and business leaders and seven presidential candidates, on false charges, mostly of “treason against the fatherland,” thereby sowing terror in citizenship and eliminated any electoral rival.
