MIAMI – The U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) imposed sanctions on five more officials working in the Nicaraguan government on Thursday.
The five officials occupy top positions in the Ortega-Murillo regime, heading various agencies overseeing the Central American government’s affairs in telecommunication, finance, labor, and top military intelligence sectors.
The U.S. Treasury Department issued a press release on its website on Thursday, accusing the Nicaraguan National Assembly of being “co-opted by the Murillo-Ortega regime” to rewrite the nation’s constitution in January 2025, “effectively eliminating the separation of powers” and “stripped civil and political protections,” usurping “control over the media,” and unleashing the government’s “paramilitary forces to enforce repression” upon the Nicaraguan people.
“The Murillo-Ortega dictatorship has continued its domestic and international campaign of repression and tyranny to intimidate, stifle, and undermine peaceful political opponents and dissenters,” said Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.
“We will continue to hold the dictatorship to account and to amplify the Nicaraguan people’s aspirations for freedom and justice,” Bessent added.
The officials who will now fall under the new round of U.S. sanctions include:
- Minister of Labor, Johana Flores
- The Director of the Financial Analysis Unit, Denis Membreno
- Deputy Director of Financial Analysis, Aldo Saenz
- Deputy Director of the Nicaraguan Institute of Telecommunications & Posts, Celia Reyes
- Head of the Directorate of Military Intelligence – Leonel Gutiérrez
The sanctions stem from a brutal government crackdown on demonstrators in the capital of Managua in April 2018, who protested the regime’s proposed pension reforms.
The government was accused by opposition groups and human rights organizations of deploying the regime’s notorious las turbas, or mobs, to repress protesters in the streets of Managua, reportedly killing over 300 people over a one-month period.
In May, delegates from the Inter-American Committee on Human Rights visited the Central American nation, reporting that they witnessed grave violations of human rights and the excessive use of force by “third-party groups.”
In May 2025, over 250 individuals with ties to the Nicaraguan government were sanctioned by U.S. authorities, citing the repression of civil society organizations and for allegedly facilitating the smuggling of migrants into the United States.
In March of that same year, the Attorney General of Nicaragua, Wendy Carolina Morales Urbina, was also sanctioned by the U.S. government for her role in the regime's repression.
