Nicaragua has convicted the historic Sandinista commander Bayardo Arce, a former economic adviser to President Daniel Ortega, on corruption charges and confiscated his assets, the Nicaraguan government said on Tuesday, without specifying the sentence. Arce, 76, was jailed in late July of last year after falling from favor in an internal purge within the circles of power.
According to exiled Nicaraguan opposition figures, the purge is being driven by co-president Rosario Murillo, with the backing of Ortega, her husband, to secure the succession. In a statement, the Attorney General’s Office said a Managua court found the Sandinista commander criminally liable for “money laundering in the form of defrauding the state.”
According to the indictment, Arce orchestrated a “structured scheme” involving the use of “funds of illicit origin” totaling nearly $3 billion, linked to tax evasion through the use of shell companies and bank accounts. Together with his assistant, Ricardo Bonilla, who was also convicted, they used “front men” and carried out “sham loans and international transfers to Panama and the British Virgin Islands,” according to the Attorney General’s Office.
In the case, the judiciary ordered the “cancellation of companies” and the “seizure of assets” belonging to Arce and Bonilla, without saying whether the conviction also includes a prison sentence. Arce is the third member of the old guard of the former guerrilla Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN, in power) to lose the government’s favor in Nicaragua.
Henry Ruiz has been under house arrest since March 2025, and Humberto Ortega, former army chief and the president’s brother, was also under house arrest when he died in September 2024. Arce and Daniel Ortega fought together in the armed struggle against dictator Anastasio Somoza, who was overthrown in 1979 with the triumph of the Sandinista revolution.
Ortega, 80, governed Nicaragua in the 1980s. After several years in opposition, he has remained in power since 2007 following elections questioned by the international community. In recent months he has been seen at public events having difficulty walking—he suffers from lupus and kidney failure—leading opposition analysts to say Murillo is positioning herself to succeed him.
