Businessman Piero Coen, in a worn image.
Police on Friday broke into the luxury Old Santo Domingo complex in Managua on orders from the Nicaraguan regime and ordered the residential and office building to become “the property of the State of Nicaragua.” The office workers were alarmed when they saw the police patrols and shortly afterwards learned that the seizure of the assets of businessman Piero Coen Ubilla, manager of the Coen Group, one of the largest in the country, which operates the local subsidiary of the shipping company of Western Union remittances, as well as other agribusiness, livestock, and real estate businesses, including the expropriated building in which he owns shares. This is the first expropriation of a big business by the regime of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo.
The agents also broke into his home in the Nicaraguan capital. In a statement released hours after the raids, Coen Ubilla confirmed that officers from the National Police and the Attorney General’s Office (PGR) had seized various properties registered in his name and that of his wife Jaffa Coen, a US citizen. The businessman denied being involved in any legal proceedings or being informed about the confiscation of his property.
However, while the raids were being conducted, a court case was being heard against de Coen, in which the state is appearing as “victim/offended”. The March 27 indictment was filed this Thursday, June 22. A secretly crafted trial. The court filing follows the logic used against other opponents who have suffered dispossession and been stripped of their nationality: the crime of “treason.”
“I can assure you that there is no crime that I can be accused of, let alone one that threatens my country or Nicaraguan society,” Coen said in the statement. “Since I assumed the position of President and CEO of Grupo Coen more than 15 years ago, I have dedicated myself to working hard to create jobs in Nicaragua and to nurture alliances and companies that work in every country in that we work have contributed to the development and well-being.” We work primarily in my beloved homeland of Nicaragua.
A propagandist had warned him
Coen’s seizure is the first recorded against a major businessman in Nicaragua, although the Ortega-Murillo regime has already made seizures state policy. For example, 322 Nicaraguans who were stripped of their citizenship and exiled had their material goods stripped and their bank accounts frozen. A pick-me-up that brings back the disastrous specter of expropriations in Nicaragua in the 1980s.
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Weeks before Coen was seized, regime spokesman William Grigsby said on his radio show that big businessmen were “somocistas,” “thieves,” “traitors,” and “cowards.” Until 2018, when massive social protests cornered the Ortega-Murillos, the government maintained a very close relationship with the private sector, dubbed “dialogue and consensus,” even enshrined in the constitution. But in the face of brutal police and paramilitary violence against Nicaraguans, businessmen broke the corporatist idyll and began to be harassed.
Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo. JAIRO CAJINA (AFP)
Coen was one of the most visible businessmen at the April 2018 protests. He took part in the massive peaceful anti-government marches, carrying a blue and white flag to encourage the young protesters. Not surprisingly, Coen was the first to be the target of Grigsby’s attacks (a sort of harbinger of the Ortega-Murillo repression, as he announced the regime’s next targets during the hunt for opponents in 2021).
The propagandist also directly threatened businessmen Carlos Pellas, the owner of Grupo Pellas; Ramiro Ortiz Mayorga from the Promerica Group; Roberto Zamora Llanes, President of Lafise Bank; José Antonio Baltodano, owner of Café Soluble and Juan Bautista Sacasa Gómez, President of Banco de Finanzas. “They funded the purchase of weapons, the maintenance of roadblocks (barricades), a disinformation and smear campaign,” Grigsby accused.
Businessmen in exile and freed politicians warned that the confiscation of Coen heralds a new level of repression against big business. “This expropriation is a very clear negative signal for the economy of this country,” said Juan Sebastián Chamorro, a former presidential candidate and an official close to the private sector for years. “Investors are certainly looking at this with great concern, and it will lead to a decline in depleted foreign investment. I also do not rule out confiscations at companies. “It is likely that there are also economic interests behind staying with companies, in addition to real estate,” he complained.
The confiscations of private property began after the 2018 uprising, when hundreds of squatters dispatched by the ruling party occupied up to 9,800 manzana’s of land in eight departments, according to the Union of Agricultural Producers of Nicaragua (Upanic). 91% of this land belonged to the agricultural sector. Coen was one of those affected; The Tomatierras took about 1,500 manzanas belonging to the Coen group. In one of these, a 25-hectare plot was burned down to damage crops.
A private sector source warned that these virtual confiscations and attacks on big business owners would directly affect the legal certainty of doing business in Nicaragua. “There is no businessman who is certain that it will not be confiscated,” he said, recalling the intentions of the Ortega-Murillo regime against the private sector. Last March, the government stripped the legal status of the Supreme Council for Private Enterprises (COSEP) and the 18 chambers of commerce that made it up.
Félix Maradiaga, former presidential candidate-in-exile, said that private property is one of the cornerstones for socio-economic development in Nicaragua, a country where the private sector is the main employer. “The attack on the private property of business people who create jobs is undermining domestic and foreign investors’ confidence in investing. Those most affected are the poorest, who need decent and quality jobs. “Discouraging investment is one of the main reasons for the increase in poverty,” Maradiaga said.
Meanwhile, propagandist Grigsby’s threats persist: “The tycoons were rescued despite locking up their employees, José Adán Aguerri, former president of Cosep, and Luis Rivas, former manager of Banpro (…). They don’t punish later.” They say that one is the bad guy. They spared their lives because there was enough documentation and evidence of what they did in the military phase of the coup (…) In the hairstyle President Ortega did to the main leaders of the armed phase, the Somocista coup, he left her unharmed.
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