The Nicaraguan Congress approved this Monday a law to punish companies that apply international sanctions in the country with fines or cessation of operations, like those that the United States has adopted against the regime of Daniel Ortega.
The regime may “impose sanctions and fines” and even order “the temporary or definitive suspension” of operations to entities that apply foreign sanctions, according to the text approved unanimously by the parliament, with a pro-government majority.
The law was voted after on Friday the National Assembly (AN, legislative) approved, also unanimously, a constitutional reform that grants absolute power of the State to Ortega and his wife Rosario Murillowhose rank was elevated from vice president to “co-president.”
Ortega, who presented both initiatives, argues that the law will protect Nicaraguans and their institutions from sanctions, but analysts warn that it will put banks and other foreign companies doing business in Nicaragua in serious trouble.
The Nicaraguan analyst Manuel Orozcoof the Inter-American Dialogue, commented to the AFP that this regulation puts into “high financial risk to the country”, since national banks that apply it will risk “sanctions from the US Treasury.”
Furthermore, failure to comply with the new law will be considered in the criminal field as “betrayal of the country”, crime that can carry a sentence of about 30 years in prison.
Since the 2018 anti-government protests, which the UN says left more than 300 dead, The United States, Canada and the European Union have imposed sanctions on hundreds of public officials and entities whom they accused of supporting the government in human rights violations.
The official deputy Wálmaro Gutiérrez defended the law, arguing that there is no reason for “a provision of a foreign government” to have “application in a country other than its country of origin.”
Washington this year sanctioned two government-affiliated mining companies and restricted visas for senior officials at a European charter airline accused of facilitating irregular migration to the United States through Nicaragua.
Recently, the State Department restricted visas to 350 members of the Nicaraguan National Police, accused of violating human rights.
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 reelections, the last of them in 2021 in elections with the opposition imprisoned or in exile. .
For its part, a group of United Nations experts has warned about the “disastrous consequences” of the constitutional reform approved by the National Assembly of Nicaragua.
“With this reform, the twelfth since Daniel Ortega returned to the Presidency in 2007, the current Government apparently intends to legalize and consolidate its unrestricted control of power,” the group’s president detailed. Jan-Michael Simon.
The measure affects more than a hundred articles of the Magna Carta and, for example, establishes the flag of the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN) as an official symbol of Nicaragua.
(With information from AFP and EP)
