Nicaragua’s New “Super” Prosecutor’s Office
The Attorney General’s Office has shifted from being the “State’s lawyer” to a repressive arm used to confiscate, spy on, and dismiss. With its powers greatly expanded, its new role will also include bringing formal charges.
HAVANA TIMES – Shortly after 2 p.m. on Wednesday, September 11, 2024, a group of people identified as workers from the Attorney General’s Office arrived at the office of Erling Valdivia Garcia, then mayor of Mulukukú in Nicaragua’s North Caribbean Coast. Their purpose: to evict him and inform him of his immediate dismissal. By that time, the dictatorship of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo had already removed 12 elected municipal authorities for the 2023–2026 term. However, this was the first time the Attorney General’s Office publicly carried out the role of executioner.
Previously, the responsibility for evaluating the public performance of mayors rested with the now-reduced Comptroller General’s Office and the now-defunct Nicaraguan Institute for Municipal Development.
The Attorney General’s Office’s role as the “decapitator” of mayors did not end with the case in Mulukukú. Since then, it has been involved in every dismissal of mayors and municipal authorities.
In other areas, its growing power had already been evident for some years. In 2021, it became prominent for justifying the illegal confiscation of the Taiwanese embassy and continued expanding its functions by carrying out mass dismissals in public institutions such as the now-disbanded Ministry of Family, Community, Cooperative, and Associative Economy, the Ministry of Development, Industry and Trade, the Ministry of Health, public universities, and other institutions; it also took over functions of the Judiciary, which had been “scorched earth” by orders from co-dictator Rosario Murillo.
Its role in recent years was always beyond its legal authority, but now the dictatorship has given it a new name to formalize (and further strengthen) its repressive reach. With a new constitutional reform approved on August 6, 2025, the dictatorship created the “General Prosecutor’s Office of Justice,” replacing the Attorney General’s Office. This new entity assumes the functions of the Public Ministry or Prosecutor’s Office, the dictatorship’s old factory for fabricating crimes to accuse citizens and opponents.
Attorney General’s Office “rolling heads” at universities
There were only a few hours left in the workweek when several officials—identified as workers from the Attorney General’s Office—arrived at the National Engineering University (UNI) to deliver dismissal letters. It was Friday, October 18, 2024. “They entered the office of the rector, Glenda Velasquez, asked for her, and locked themselves inside. Minutes later, we learned a purge was coming,” explains Maritza, an employee at that university.
“The Attorney General’s Office arrived with the dismissal order for the rector—who left her office with nothing—and for three other high-ranking university officials. But then came a wave of dismissals that included professors, cleaning staff, and administrative personnel,” says the public employee.
For Maritza, it was “strange” that the Attorney General’s Office was the one ordering layoffs at an educational institution, “when apparently, not even the National University Council participated in that purge.”
“It’s a strange behavior, but we’ve learned that the Attorney General’s Office has been increasingly involved in these mass dismissals. Maybe the dismissals are justified, but it’s not clear why the Attorney General’s Office is the one doing it,” she insists.
Auditing City Halls “as if they were comptrollers”
“The Attorney General’s Office has been gaining power to the point that it’s leading so-called audits in various municipalities across Nicaragua,” says Hector, an employee at a municipal office in the south of the country.
It has been officials from the Attorney General’s Office who directly ordered the removal of mayors, as happened in Granada and El Rosario (Carazo).
At the end of 2024, City Halls in the departments of Granada, Carazo, and Rivas began to be audited by officials from the Attorney General’s Office, severalmunicipal workers confirmed to CONFIDENCIAL.
“Apparently, some municipalities came out clean, but others were given warnings,” said the government worker.
Officials from the Attorney General’s Office arrived at the departmental capitals to set up operations, and from there they investigate various municipalities, according to Ivania Alvarez from the Nicaraguan exile observatory Urnas Abiertas.
“This wasn’t the case before; audits used to be conducted based on the project timelines in City Halls, and they were generally done by the Comptroller’s office and the Instituto Nicaragüense de Fomento Municipal (Inifom),” Alvarez clarifies.
The observatory warns that the new tasks assigned to the Attorney General’s Office do not benefit local development or municipal management, because it “will only act as a mediator and a national oversight body,” while all 153 City Halls continue operating under the dictatorship’s orders, “without fully exercising political, administrative, and financial municipal autonomy.”
Héctor, who has been working in a municipality for several years, insists that it’s “an abnormal situation” for the Attorney General’s Office to be “carrying out audits as if they were comptrollers, ordering dismissals, demanding accountability.”
“The truth is, for now it seems like this institution is the one beheading and closely monitoring measuring the ribs of all public workers,” he says.
The regime’s current executioner in a climate of distrust
In an earlier attempt to legitimize the Attorney General’s actions, in April 2024, the regime ordered the creation of Municipal Attorney General’s Offices, which, in practice, increases control over Nicaragua’s municipal governments.
Three months later, in July, the dictatorship fully dismantled the already defunct Inifom, transferring all its powers and assets to the increasingly powerful Attorney General’s Office.
In its speeches, the regime justified these changes as part of a process of “transformation and remodeling of the State,” but what public workers perceive is that the Attorney General’s Office is their new executioner.
The organization Urnas Abiertas believes these decisions reflect the deep mistrust Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo have toward their institutions and public servants in Nicaragua’s municipalities.
Likewise,the Attorney General’s Office has taken over functions previously handled by other state entities, such as issuing environmental certifications and permits, which were formerly approved by the Ministry of the Environment and Natural Resources (Marena).
Since 2023, it has also been in charge of managing all public registries. On October 31 of that year, the National Assembly approved the Law on the Assignment of the National Registry System, ordering that all public registries be transferred to the administration of the Attorney General’s Office, which was already known for carrying out illegal confiscations against hundreds of canceled non-profit organizations and opponents and dissidents of the dictatorship.
“The Attorney General’s Office is the institution that acts as the State’s legal representative. Giving it full control over public registries harms private individuals and business partners, undermining legal security,” warned constitutional lawyer Juan Diego Barberena at the time.
But the concentration of powers didn’t stop there. Less than six months later, on April 25, 2024, the National Assembly approved the transfer of the Directorate of Alternative Conflict Resolution, which had previously been part of the Supreme Court of Justice.
The so-called fight against “unauthorized corruption”
The Ortega-Murillo dictatorship had already formalized part of the power it has transferred over recent years to the “super” Attorney General’s Office.
In the revised Constitution, approved in January 2025, Article 160 redefines the Attorney General’s Office as “the leading institution in defending the rule of law, combating corruption, ensuring legal security of property rights, and promoting social control over public management.”
In the regime’s rhetoric, according to Article 160, all these changes are part of the “defense of State interests” and the “strengthening of a culture of honesty, legality, justice, and social equity.”
The regime has dismissed public officials—including ministers, deputy ministers, former military personnel, and ex-police officers—based on alleged investigations of “unauthorized corruption.” Some fallen from grace include Arlette Marenco, removed from her post as vice foreign minister; and Juan José Montoya, former treasurer of the Ministry of Finance and Public Credit, who also had six luxurious properties confiscated and later redistributed by the Attorney General’s Office.
At midnight on July 30, 2025, presidential advisor on Economic Affairs Bayardo Arce Castaño—also a former member of the Sandinista National Directorate in the 1980s and a loyal political operative of dictator Daniel Ortega—became the next target. Five hours after the Attorney General’s Office issued a statement summoning him for an investigation into “off-the-books transactions,” dozens of police officers from the Directorate of Special Operations raided his home and arrested him.
In Charge of Illegal Confiscations and Transfers
The Attorney General’s Office had already become “notorious” for carrying out the dictatorship’s illegal confiscations. In December 2021, Ortega’s regime broke diplomatic relations with Taiwan to recognize mainland China as the “only legitimate government.” Taiwan decided to liquidate its assets by donating them to the Catholic Church. However, these assets were seized by orders from Ortega and Murillo and handed over to China “with absolute and unrestricted ownership rights.”
In a press release, the Attorney General’s Office stated that “the recognition by a State of the reality of one China, as occurred in the case of Nicaragua on December 9, 2021, implies the immediate registration of all real estate, movable property, equipment, and assets in favor of the recognized State, the People’s Republic of China.”
On March 1, 2023, the Attorney General’s Office also formalized the confiscation of properties belonging to 94 opposition figures who were stripped of their nationality in February of that year. Among them were: Auxiliary Bishop of Managua Silvio Baez; writers Sergio Ramirez and Gioconda Belli; journalist and director of CONFIDENCIAL Carlos Fernando Chamorro,; former commander of the FSLN National Directorate in the 1980s Luis Carrión; former guerrilla commander Monica Baltodano; former Foreign Minister Norman Caldera; and former judicial official Yader Morazan.
In the press release, the Attorney General’s Office called on anyone occupying those properties “through rent, usufruct, or similar arrangements” to come to the offices to “formalize” their occupancy status.
The media outlet Divergentes reported in March 2023 that residents of the 16 Amazonia apartments—where feminist activist and Nicaraguan lawyer Azahálea Solís and journalist Sofía Montenegro (both now denationalized) lived—were confiscated and forced either to leave their homes or pay a $500 rent to the State. Other denationalized individuals reported similar situations and even continued receiving bank charges despite the confiscations.
Press release from the Attorney General’s Office justifying the confiscations. // Screenshot
In October 2024, the Attorney General’s Office also took control of 35 private properties in Managua that were allegedly “abandoned,” claiming the land could be used “to disturb peace, social welfare, and public security.” The lots totaled 21,643.13 square meters and were declared to be of “public utility.”
“Whitewashing” the dictatorship’s thefts
Through the Attorney General’s Office, the regime has also tried to justify the mass confiscations in Nicaragua by claiming that they have simply “recovered for the people of Nicaragua” hundreds of properties they say were “wrongfully enjoyed” by private individuals.
In a statement dated May 17, 2024, they claim that the “transfer to the State” of hundreds of properties is the result of a series of criminal proceedings related to “drug trafficking, money laundering, and crimes against public security, sovereignty, peace, and the well-being of families.”
According to the regime’s narrative, the State of Nicaragua has also “recovered properties” belonging to Non-Profit Organizations due to their failure to comply with regulating laws, and they argue that “what has prevailed is the restitution to the State of properties that private individuals were wrongfully enjoying through legal subterfuge.”
Its great power comes with a big budget
Alongside its expanding functions,the Attorney General’s Office has also seen its budget grow significantly. Starting in 2024, the funds allocated to the institution increased by more than 200%, rising from 163.9 million córdobas in 2023 to 503.9 million córdobas in 2024. And in 2025, the budget grew another 43%, reaching an allocation of 721.7 million córdobas, according to the current General State Budget. (1 USD = 36.75 cordobas)
“The Attorney General’s Office has started hiring more staff, centralizing officials who were previously in other agencies, and exercising oversight over the rest of the State,” says Antonio, a lawyer and public sector employee for nearly 20 years.
According to Antonio, Attorney General Wendy Morales “has become one of the dictatorship’s most loyal and trusted public officials,” serving as the visible face of the confiscations and theft of private property.
Morales has also been one of the few voices representing the increasingly isolated regime on the international stage. In international forums, she has taken on the role of denying the brutal repression and the deaths of at least 355 Nicaraguans during the 2018 protests, as documented by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.
“The Attorney General’s Office is supposed to be the State’s lawyer, but in practice it has become an inquisitorial tribunal that monitors the rest of the State and has unleashed a witch hunt against opposition members, civil society organizations, media outlets, and anything else it sees as a threat,” Antonio points out.
This public employee saysthe Attorney General’s Office is the dictatorship’s legal arm, and since it controls public records, “no one knows whose name the illegally confiscated properties are being placed under.”
“It’s likely that right under our noses, a ‘Sandinista piñata’ of assets is happening, just like in the eighties,” he warns. But while the ‘super’ Attorney General’s Office confiscates, monitors, and fires, with more and more institutions and powers under its control, it answers only to the dictators it serves.