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Nestor Moncada Lau, the “national security” advisor to the regime, and one of the main political operators of repression and the police state in Nicaragua since 2018, has been imprisoned at the La Modelo National Penitentiary System since the morning of Saturday, August 16, 2025, by order of Rosario Murillo, sources linked to the National Police confirmed to CONFIDENCIAL.
Néstor Moncada Lau, a former State Security officer in the 1980s, assumed full control of security in the Sandinista Front Secretariat after the dismissal of Lenín Cerna and his team, ordered by Rosario Murillo in 2011. Known as “the custodian of El Carmen’s secrets,” (the Ortega-Murillo residence and presidential offices) he was arrested by police at his home in the El Rodeo neighborhood on the night of Thursday, August 14, and taken to the Judicial Assistance Directorate, El Chipote.
At El Chipote, he was interrogated about his connections with Arlen Aracelly Mairena Maradiaga, originally from Leon, who has been under house arrest in Managua since August 11, 2025, sources revealed.
“Aracelly Mairena is someone very close to Daniel Ortega and has enjoyed his protection for more than fifteen years,” said a source linked to the FSLN.
In 2017, when the Attorney General’s Office stripped Leon businessman Silvio Argüello Cardenal of a property at kilometer 105 on the Leon–Chinandega highway and of his construction materials company Silico, known as “La Pedrera,” Mairena benefited from the “donation” of the property, thanks to arrangements made by Nestor Moncada Lau with Daniel Ortega’s approval.
Since then, Mairena had acted as the owner and director of the construction materials company Agremicsa, employing about 40 workers, as well as managing other private businesses. But on August 11, 2025, all her assets were confiscated by the new Office of the Attorney General, under orders from co-president Rosario Murillo.
Interrogation at El Chipote and transfer to La Modelo
After the interrogation at El Chipote on the night of Thursday the 14th and the morning of Friday the 15th, security advisor Néstor Moncada Lau was taken back home Friday afternoon and placed under police surveillance.
However, on the morning of Saturday, August 16, Moncada was once again arrested by the Police and taken to the La Modelo National Penitentiary System, by order of Rosario Murillo, although officially he has not been charged by either the Prosecutor’s Office or the Attorney General.
“I saw a photo of ‘Chema’ (Nestor Moncada Lau) handcuffed and dressed in a blue prison uniform. His arrest has caused great fear in the FSLN Secretariat. Everyone is very worried,” said a source linked to the Sandinista Front, who associated his downfall with “the absolute power that comrade Rosario is already exercising in the party and in the State.”
At the end of July 2025, presidential advisor on economic affairs Bayardo Arce Castaño, a former member of the Sandinista Front National Directorate in the 1980s, was arrested after the Attorney General alleged that Arce had not responded to two interview requests in an investigation into “transactions outside the State.” More than two weeks later, neither the Police nor Ortega have commented.
At the same time, rumors spread that retired Colonel Lenin Cerna had fled a police raid on his home. However, police sources consulted by CONFIDENCIAL dismissed the story of an alleged escape. Days later, on August 10, Cerna was spotted near the National Baseball Stadium and along stretches of the Carretera a Masaya, traveling in a blue Mercedes Benz driven by a police officer and escorted by a police vehicle. Meanwhile, one of Cerna’s main collaborators, retired Colonel Rodolfo Castillo “Payín,” was arrested during the August 1 equestrian festivities and is being held in La Modelo prison.
Sanctioned as “loyal enabler” and for corruption
Nestor Moncada Lau was sanctioned by the United States on November 27, 2018, along with Rosario Murillo, for supposed “responsibility” and “complicity” in the “serious” human rights abuses in Nicaragua, following the official repression unleashed by the Ortega regime against the citizen protests starting in April that year.
“Moncada made payments to suppress protesters opposing Ortega and Murillo and, through his various intelligence roles, worked to bribe and blackmail individuals to secure their support or prevent them from expressing opposition to Ortega’s government. Additionally, Moncada has engaged in acts of corruption on behalf of Ortega and Murillo. In at least one case, Moncada collaborated with President Ortega to cover up Ortega’s sexual misconduct with a minor,” the U.S. Treasury detailed in November 2018.
In December 2021, the United States expanded the sanctions against Moncada Lau, targeting his entire family — his wife and children — accusing them of involvement in customs fraud and corrupt operations.
“Nestor Moncada Lau, national security advisor to the Ortega-Murillo regime, is designated for engaging in significant corruption by accepting monetary bribes in exchange for using his control over Nicaragua’s tax and customs authorities to enable and perpetuate a customs and import fraud scheme to enrich members of the Ortega-Murillo regime,” the US State Department said when expanding the sanctions.
In January 2022, a CONFIDENCIAL investigation revealed how the fiefdom of his brother, Oscar Moncada Lau, operated inside Nicaragua’s Customs. Importers described, step by step, the corruption scheme involving extortion of businesspeople and multimillion-dollar charges over supposed “value doubts,” while “friends” were considered “untouchable.”
Ortega’s Most Trusted Man
Even before the outbreak of protests and the brutal state and paramilitary repression in 2018, as “national security advisor” to Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, Moncada Lau had acted as one of the main political operators in relations with the Police and in coordination with the Police and Army’s intelligence and investigative agencies.
Néstor Moncada Lau is a seasoned former State Security officer of the Ministry of the Interior in the 1980s, with deep ties of loyalty to Daniel Ortega. “He is the custodian of the secrets of El Carmen, and one of the people Daniel Ortega trusts the most,” a Sandinista Front source told CONFIDENCIAL.
In November 1980, Moncada Lau took part in the operation in which businessman Jorge Salazar Argüello, president of the Union of Agricultural Producers of Nicaragua (Upanic) and vice president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), was killed.
Infiltrated in Salazar’s conspiratorial group, “Chema” lured the businessman to the old Esso gas station in El Crucero to carry out a weapons transfer, when a Ministry of the Interior patrol appeared and opened fire, killing Salazar. Moncada Lau was detained and prosecuted, and as part of the same plot—intended to publicly expose the scope of the conspiracy—he was later sent to Cuba for a “cooling-off” period, where he received intelligence and counterintelligence training.
Two years later, he returned to Nicaragua, first as a Military Intelligence officer in the Army, then assigned to the Economic Directorate of the National Police, and finally to the Directorate of Public Security, until he retired in 1992 with the rank of deputy commander.
Retired from military life, Moncada Lau became part of Commander Ortega’s inner circle in the FSLN Secretariat. In the mid-1990s, he was on a list of suspects investigated by the National Police in connection with a wave of twelve terrorist attacks that targeted Catholic churches, though no human casualties occurred.
On January 10, 1997, just hours before the inauguration of then-President Arnoldo Alemán, he was detained by the National Police while transporting four blocks of TNT explosives. He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for terrorism, but Judge Sergio Palacios granted him parole “considering his good conduct in previous years.”
His role after Ortega’s return to the presidency
When Ortega returned to power in 2007, Néstor Moncada Lau assumed a prominent role as the president’s liaison with then-Police Chief Aminta Granera. All orders from Ortega to Granera and to the then-Minister of the Interior, Ana Isabel Morales, were channeled through Moncada Lau.
He also played a decisive role in the political restructuring of the National Police, the selection of professional officers for retirement, and the promotion of personnel aligned with their loyalty to the FSLN Secretary General.
Moreover, as a power operator, his sphere of influence extended to the Ministry of the Interior, the Supreme Court of Justice (CSJ), the General Directorate of Migration and Foreigners (DGME), the General Directorate of Revenue (DGI), and the General Directorate of Customs (DGA).
In April 2011, an investigation by the Police Investigations Directorate into irregularities at the DGI led to the dismissal of its head, Walter Porras, and paved the way for the removal of retired Colonel Lenin Cerna from his position as FSLN Secretary of Organization.
With Cerna removed and the influence of his own network of operators weakened, Moncada Lau became the sole political authority in the FSLN Secretariat. Formally, he has never held an official government position nor appears in the Ortega-Murillo administration’s organizational chart, but no one disputes his influence as the guardian of the presidential couple’s private affairs.
