The Nicaraguan government on Thursday accused a retired general, once an ally of President Daniel Ortega, and his son of using shell companies to launder money through the operation of a geothermal plant.
Retired military officer and former guerrilla Álvaro Baltodano Cantarero was once a key political and investment operator for the Sandinista government. However, the Attorney General’s Office has charged him and his son with money laundering.
According to the Attorney General’s Office, the Baltodanos allegedly “designed” from within the company Momotombo Power Company a network of “20 shell companies” to “launder money from criminal activities related to tax evasion.”
Exiled Nicaraguan opposition figures say the arrests are part of an internal purge in ruling circles led by Rosario Murillo, the powerful co-president and wife of Ortega, with her husband’s approval.
General Baltodano was arrested in May and sentenced to 20 years in prison for “treason,” according to Nicaraguan media outlets based in exile.
A month later, police arrested his son, businessman Álvaro Baltodano Monroy, who holds both Nicaraguan and Mexican citizenship, according to the digital newspaper Confidencial.
Their company operated the Momotombo geothermal power plant in the northern department of León. Following what authorities called “evidence,” the plant’s concession contract was permanently canceled, the Attorney General’s Office said in a statement published on the pro-government site El 19 Digital.
The investigations “revealed that this company not only betrayed the trust of the people and the State (…) but also used a strategic national resource as a platform to carry out the criminal objectives of the Baltodanos,” the statement added.
The corruption accusations against the Baltodanos come two weeks after the government jailed historic Sandinista commander Bayardo Arce, Ortega’s economic adviser, whom the Attorney General’s Office accuses of carrying out illegal property transactions and negotiations.
Ortega, a 79-year-old former guerrilla in power since 2007 who also governed Nicaragua in the 1980s, has been accused by critics and human rights organizations of establishing a “family dictatorship” with Murillo, 74, who was named co-president in February through a constitutional reform.
In recent months, Ortega has appeared in public with difficulty walking and a pale complexion — he suffers from lupus and kidney failure — leading opposition analysts to claim Murillo is paving the way for succession.
