* The wealth of dictator Daniel Ortega and his family covers a wide list of assets and is presumed to be more than USD2.5 billion.
** Ortega, who proclaims himself the ‘president of the poor’ when he was a presidential candidate in 2006, declared that he had USD 17,000 in assets and accounts.
Expediente Público
After Daniel Ortega returned to power in Nicaragua in 2007, he built a fortune, which some media and economists estimate to be more than 2.5 billion dollars.
Much of his personal wealth comes from Venezuelan cooperation, according to different investigations.
Ortega directed billions of dollars over a decade in funds that Venezuela delivered within the framework of the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) agreement.
The resources destined for development and collaboration projects between the two countries would have been channeled by Ortega for personal and political purposes, consulted experts agree.
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«They steal away their important assets with money from Venezuela,» says economist and political analyst Óscar René Vargas, one of the 222 released political prisoners exiled by the dictatorship.
From 2007 to 2018, Venezuela gave Ortega USD5.0578 billion to finance his political project.
Ortega controlled the distribution of Venezuelan oil and acquired a chain of gas stations, delegating to his eldest son, Rafael Ortega Murillo, «the key money manager behind the family’s illicit financial schemes,» according to the Department of the Treasury.
It also formed a business conglomerate for Ortega with the help of front men, his sons and daughters-in-law that includes hotels, media, telephone, advertising agencies and businesses in the energy sectors.
However, no one knows the total amount of his wealth or all his businesses.
Daniel Ortega and his network of front men
Mentioning a figure is «very bold,» acknowledges the economist and exiled political prisoner, Juan Sebastián Chamorro.
In addition, it is also not known with certainty how much of that fortune belongs to his wife, Rosario Murillo, and their children.
«These people have a whole mechanism of using front men who, probably, will never know the total amount of their fortune,» Chamorro explained to Expediente Público.
Lawyer José Mojica Mejía and Aura Cecilia Toruño Porras with shares in DNP-Petronic, and Francisco «Chico» López, the treasurer of the FSLN and former president of the Albanisa Group are some of the family’s front men.
«They themselves work to hide all this (…). This is part of a mafia organization where you can infer where the wealth goes,» Chamorro added.
There is no way to audit
The lack of transparency and the opaque nature of his administration in the Central American country make it difficult to obtain accurate figures.
According to Executive Decree 19-2007, which he approved a month after taking office 17 years ago, Ortega has a monthly salary of USD3,200.
Journalistic investigations, however, consider that Ortega earns at least USD4,200 a month.
But is it possible to build an emporium and maintain a lifestyle like that of the Ortega family with an official salary of USD 3,200 per month?
The reality is that the former Sandinista guerrilla, who proclaims himself ‘president of the poor,’ amassed a fortune of USD2.5 billion by 2018, according to a publication by Bloomberg Línea, a business news platform in Latin America and the Caribbean.
«There is no way» to audit the assets of the family in power, reiterated the former Nicaraguan deputy, Eliseo Núñez.
«The Comptroller General of the Republic has not existed since Ortega returned to power,» he said.
In Nicaragua, the Comptroller’s Office is the entity responsible for overseeing and controlling the use of public resources, as well as receiving and supervising declarations of probity from officials.
The only declaration of probity
Seventeen years after his return to power, the only thing declared by Ortega was in 2006 when he was a presidential candidate.
That year Ortega reported a net worth of $217,844 for himself and $159,300 for Murillo.
That declaration is the only public indication of the family wealth in the last 17 years, a period characterized by a notable growth in his personal fortune.
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On the other hand, «you see the accelerated enrichment of a family that now has a vast fortune,» Chamorro said.
The «absolute control» over the entire public apparatus and the State, according to Chamorro, allowed Ortega to totally consolidate his power.
Where does Daniel Ortega’s fortune come from?
On January 11, 2007, one day after taking office, Ortega signed Nicaragua’s accession to the ALBA initiative.
The Venezuelan initiative emerged as a trade and regional integration alternative to counteract the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA), promoted by the United States.
«The Supreme Dream of Bolívar,» a work valued at USD6.6 million dollars, became the most emblematic project that did not materialize in the Central American country.
The Official External Cooperation Report of the Central Bank of Nicaragua reveals that, in 2007, Ortega received USD185 million.
In 2008, Venezuelan cooperation increased to USD457 million, a financing linked to oil collaboration and investments in the energy sector.
Venezuela, in 2012, made the largest disbursement to Ortega, for a total of USD729.3 million.
Ortega and the fuel business
The «discretionary management of Venezuelan cooperation» is one of the mechanisms that enriched Ortega and his family, Núñez says.
«That gave Ortega the ability to manage money outside the budget and get rich,» Núñez said.
In the cooperation scheme, Alba de Nicaragua S.A. (Albanisa), made up of Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) and Petróleos de Nicaragua (Petronic), appears.
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Albanisa would become in the short term one of the most influential and largest companies in Nicaragua.
The Nicaraguan Petroleum Distributor (Distribuidora Nicaragüense de Petróleos, DNP-Petronic) had its participation within this circle.
Expediente Público, in the article «Yadira Leets What is she doing in the U.S., the administrator of Ortega’s oil empire?,» revealed that DNP-Petronic imported 76% and sold 39% of the diesel and gasoline in the Central American country between 2015 and 2018.
Leets was the then-wife of Rafel Ortega Murillo.
Based on official data, it was found that DNP-Petronic had revenues of USD1.506 billion in a period of five years from the wholesale sale of fuels, where the State of Nicaragua was its main customer.
The birth of the «Chayobourgeoisie»
According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, the regime used Inversiones Zanzibar S.A., controlled by Rafael Ortega Murillo, the eldest son of Ortega and Murillo, to transfer the proceeds from the sale of fuel to the presidential family.
Rafael Ortega Murillo is the «main financial administrator behind the illicit schemes of the Ortega family».
«There is an alternative economic class, which has been built from power, and its goal is to replace the country’s business class,» Núñez said.
It coincides with the study by the think tank Expediente Abierto «The capitalism of cronies«, published in October 2024, in which Vargas describes the birth of the «Chayobourgeoisie,» a new millionaire economic class «born and developed under the protection of the regime.»
«The main operation of corruption, inexplicable enrichment and the birth of the ‘Chayobourgeoisie’ was the privatization of the money from the Oil Agreement with Venezuela,» Vargas says in his investigation.
Starting in 2015, two years after the death of then-Venezuelan President Hugo Chaves Frías (1954-2013), cooperation declined.
In 2015, the Nicaraguan regime received only USD368.1 million from Venezuelan cooperation.
The money laundering factory
A year before the outbreak of the socio-political crisis in the Central American country, an audit by the prestigious U.S. firm Grant Thornton revealed key information.
Between 2016 and 2017, the Corporate Bank (Bancorp) assumed control of the administration of the funds from Venezuelan cooperation that for years was administered by the Caja Rural de Nicaragua (Caruna).
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That money entered Bancorp under the figure of a trust which, in economic and financial matters, is a legal agreement where a person transfers assets to another to manage them for the benefit of a third party.
«That money from Albanisa is managed by the Ortega Murillo family at its discretion and Ortega got rich from that,» Núñez explained.
Douglas Farah, a U.S. journalist and national security consultant, in the investigation entitled «Maduro’s Last Resistance: Venezuela’s Survival through the Bolivarian Joint Criminal Enterprise,» exposes that Bancorp served as an entity to launder money.
Bancorp operated as a money-laundering factory for the «Bolivarian Joint Criminal Enterprise,» a unique structure, built with the direct participation of the Venezuelan state.
This is how Bancorp operated until, in April 2019, the United States sanctioned it for being a «bank used by the Ortega regime to launder and hide money from Albanisa» and «refuge for sanctioned persons» by the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC).
Before the sanctions were known, the bank’s assets in January 2019 were USD378.5 million, according to the Superintendency of Banks and Other Financial Institutions (Siboif).
Salaries and companies
The assets of the Nicaraguan regime include hotels, agricultural farms, advertising agencies, telephone companies, electricity and construction companies.
To that is added more than a dozen media, including radio and television channels that are managed by their children.
Maurice, Daniel Edmundo and Carlos Enrique (Tino) are in charge of channels 4, 13, 15 and the state-owned Channel 6, while Juan Carlos Ortega Murillo directs Channel 8 and is linked to the sanctioned advertising agency Difuso.
Daniel and Rosario’s children not only manage several of these media outlets, but their companies also receive state advertising, as Expediente Público has exposed.
On the other hand, Camila and Laureano, who are also presidential advisors, are the most visible faces in the family clan. Camila along with her sister Luciana assist Murillo in public activities.
At least five of the children of the couple in power hold public office, despite the fact that the Law of Probity of Public Servants (Law 438) prohibits it.
Mara Stotti, Karen Santamaría, Blanca Díaz and Katherine Argeñal, daughters-in-law of Ortega and Murillo, also work in state institutions, despite the fact that they violate Law 438.
In salary alone, the ruling family receives about $65,000 a month, according to a journalistic investigation by Confidencial.
«It is just one example of how they use that power of the State to enrich themselves,» said Núñez.
Some reports suggest that his wealth could be significantly greater than what has been publicly declared, but without reports from the Comptroller’s Office and the closure of public property records, it will remain a secret.
