5 de febrero 2025

Nicaragua Remains Among the 10 Most Corrupt Countries

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Rocha “investigated powerful figures without authorization and went too far.” “He's at home without duties but not detained.”
This image of retired Commissioner General Horacio Rocha López was taken after Rosario Murillo reprimanded him on national television, Monday, October 14, 2024. // Photo: CCC
Retired Commissioner General Horacio Rocha, “minister advisor to the Presidency on security issues” and main implementer of the “purges” in the government, the National Police and the government party, was removed from his position in the third week of January 2025, by order of Vice President Rosario Murillo, as confirmed to CONFIDENCIAL by two sources linked to the Ministry of the Interior and the National Police.
The Police chain of command received a notification from the Presidency that said that “Rocha is separated from all his responsibilities,” said one of the sources, adding that “no explanation or reasons were given.”
Another source, linked to the Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), said that Rocha's fall from grace is because he “went too far and overstepped his duties.”
The powerful presidential minister advisor “attributed to himself the authority to carry out investigations on high-level figures and institutions” of the upper echelons of power “without authorization,” the source explained.
Since January 17 of this year, 65-year old Horacio Rocha has been at his home, not performing the duties of presidential advisor minister.
“He is not under arrest, nor is he in jail, but he has some restrictions on his movements, and he's been interviewed at his home by officers of the Auxiliary Judicial Unit,” said the source linked to the Police.
Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have not yet named Rocha's replacement as “presidential minister-advisor on security matters”.
“I cannot rule out that Rocha could be assigned to another lower level position, but the extraordinary power he exercised as intermediary in the Police is over, and his office was vacated,” the source added.
Rocha's intervention in the National Police provoked growing unease in the command of the institution, even affecting the first commissioner Francisco Díaz, director of the Police. But at least until September 2024, Rocha had the backing of Vice President Rosario Murillo.
The first sign of Rosario Murillo's loss of confidence in Horacio Rocha was evidenced in the lead-up to the central ceremony for the 45th anniversary of the founding of the National Police on October 14, 2024, when the vice president, visibly upset, snubbed the retired commissioner general live on national television.
As part of the protocol, Ortega and Murillo must greet the heads of the National Police and the Ministry of the Interior; however, the Vice President Murillo refused to greet Horacio Rocha politely, as she did with the other police chiefs.
Sources linked to the National Police attributed Murillo's reprimand to Rocha to Murillo's vehement complaint about the leak to CONFIDENCIAL of an audio of retired general Humberto Ortega, who died as a political prisoner on September 30, 2024. The audio was sent by the former military chief from a cell phone while he was under de facto “house arrest” in the custody of special forces under Horacio Rocha's command.
Previous to that episode, Rocha would accompany the dictatorial couple in all official acts, walking a few steps behind them alongside the head of the Army, General Julio César Avilés, and the first commissioner Francisco Díaz. He would sit at the head table next to the police and military leadership. After that episode, Rocha's public appearances with Ortega and Murillo were reduced to a minimum.
The last public act in which Horacio Rocha was seen was at a graduation of cadets of the University of Police Sciences “Leonel Rugama”, on December 16, 2024. The police chief was seated at the head table, but was no longer walking a few steps behind Ortega and Murillo, according to images on Ortega's official media.
Horacio Rocha did not participate in the recent “swearing in” of thousands of paramilitaries as “volunteer police officers.” These events –held in Estelí, León, Madriz, Nueva Segovia, Carazo and Rivas– have been presided over by the chief of the National Police, who is Ortega's and Murillo's in-law.
Daniel Ortega sent Horario Rocha into retirement at the beginning of 2014, although at the end of 2015 the dictator gave him the post of consul general in South Korea, where, at the same time, his wife Ana Isabel Argüello was appointed as ambassador.
After a fleeting stint as a diplomat, the police chief went into seclusion at his estate in Carazo. Ortega recruited him again in November 2022, when he named him presidential advisor on security issues. “The main reason for calling Horacio Rocha to the FSLN Secretariat was trust. There are many defections. The couple needs loyal people who are not going to refuse to comply with an order,” said a source consulted by CONFIDENCIAL in 2022.
On December 12, 2022, the newly “resurrected” police chief was appointed as Ortega's “minister advisor on Security Affairs,” a position that made him the highest authority in the Presidency on security issues. This assured him a seat in the meetings of the Council of Ministers, presided over by Vice President Murillo, where the country's affairs are addressed.
Since his return, Horacio Rocha has been in charge –almost exclusively– of directing and carrying out all the purges within the government, police and FSLN party apparatus. In the corridors of the institutions, he is known as the “angel of death” because it is known that if he appears in the office of any official, it is to make heads roll.
Retired Commissioner General Adolfo Marenco, former director of Police Investigation and Intelligence, was the first Ortega operator “purged” by Horacio Rocha, in January 2023. Along with Marenco, Commissioner General Pedro Rodríguez, police chief of Carazo during the repression and massacre of 2018 and at that time police chief of the Mining Triangle and Mulukukú, was also purged.
On January 18, 2023, Horacio Rocha arrived at the offices of the Directorate of Civil Aeronautics and dismissed the director of that portfolio, Captain Carlos Salazar.
In September of the same year, the dismissal of Commissioner General Luis Alberto Pérez, former head of the Auxiliary Judicial Unit, was confirmed. Pérez was demoted to head of the police delegation of District III, in Managua, another torture prison that had become the “first stop” for dozens of political prisoners.
In October 2023, Horacio Rocha, together with FSLN Organization Secretary and political operator of the presidential couple, Fidel Moreno, led a “sweep” in the Judicial Branch. To date, more than 1,100 judiciary officials and workers –including Supreme Court justices, appellate magistrates, area directors, and federal and local judges across the country– have been purged.
Under orders from Rosario Murillo, Rocha personally carried out the eviction and de facto dismissal of the president of the Supreme Court, Alba Luz Ramos, who declared herself “outraged” and has since been confined to her home, under police control.
This article was originally published in Spanish by Confidencial and translated by our staff. To get the most relevant news from our English coverage delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to The Dispatch.
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Confidencial es un diario digital nicaragüense, de formato multimedia, fundado por Carlos F. Chamorro en junio de 1996. Inició como un semanario impreso y hoy es un medio de referencia regional con información, análisis, entrevistas, perfiles, reportajes e investigaciones sobre Nicaragua, informando desde el exilio por la persecución política de la dictadura de Daniel Ortega y Rosario Murillo.
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