Nicaragua: Top Security Advisor to Ortega & Murillo Jailed
Nestor Moncada Lau was the dictatorship’s gatekeeper
By order of Murillo, he was interrogated at El Chipote on Thursday August 14, sent home Friday, but on Saturday he was taken prisoner to La Modelo.
HAVANA TIMES – Nestor Moncada Lau, the “national security” advisor to the co-dictators, 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.
Moncada is a former State Security officer from the 1980s. He assumed full control of security in the Sandinista Front Secretariat after the dismissal of Lenin Cerna and his team, ordered by Rosario Murillo in 2011. The operator, described as “the custodian of the secrets of El Carmen” (the presidential family bunker and offices) was seized by the Police at his home on the night of Thursday, August 14, and taken to the infamous El Chipote jail.
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.
Around the same time, rumors circulated that retired Colonel Lenin Cerna had escaped a police raid on his home. However, sources linked to the Police denied to Confidencial the alleged “escape,” and on August 10 he was seen near the National Baseball Stadium and along various stretches of the Masaya Highway, 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 at the August 1 equestrian festivities and is imprisoned at La Modelo.
Sanctioned as “Loyal” Cover-Up and 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 counter anti-Ortega and anti-Murillo demonstrators and, through his various intelligence roles, and worked to bribe and blackmail individuals to gain their support or prevent them from expressing opposition to the Ortega government. In addition, Moncada has committed acts of corruption on behalf of Ortega and Murillo.
In December 2021, the United States expanded sanctions against Moncada Lau by punishing his entire family—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 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.
Moncada 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 participated in the operation in which businessman Jorge Salazar Argüello, president of the Union of Nicaraguan Agricultural Producers (Upanic) and vice president of the Superior Council of Private Enterprise (Cosep), was assassinated.
Infiltrated in Salazar’s conspiratorial group, “Chema” lured the businessman to the old Esso gas station in El Crucero for a supposed arms transfer, when a Ministry of the Interior patrol appeared and shot him dead. Arrested and prosecuted, as part of the same plot to publicly denounce the conspiracy, Moncada was later sent for a “cooling-off” period to Cuba, 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 his retirement in 1992 with the rank of sub-commander.
After retiring from military life, Moncada Lau entered Ortega’s inner circle in the FSLN Secretariat. In the mid-1990s, he was on the list of suspects investigated by the National Police in connection with a wave of twelve terrorist attacks that shook Catholic churches, though no human victims resulted.
On January 10, 1997, just hours before the inauguration of then-president Arnoldo Aleman, he was arrested by the National Police while transporting four sticks of TNT explosives. He was sentenced to eighteen months in prison for terrorism, but Judge Sergio Palacios granted him parole “considering he had maintained good conduct in previous years.”
His Role After Ortega’s Return to the Presidency
With Ortega’s return to power in 2007, Moncada assumed a prominent role as the president’s liaison with the then-chief of the National Police, Aminta Granera. All of Ortega’s orders to Granera and to then-Minister of the Interior Ana Isabel Morales were channeled through Moncada.
The operator also played a decisive role in the political redesigning of the National Police, the selection of professional officers for retirement, and the promotion of cadres aligned by their loyalty to Ortega.
In addition, his reach as a power broker extended to the Ministry of the Interior, the Supreme Court, Immigration, the Tax Office and Customs.
In April 2011, a National Police investigation into irregularities at the Tax Office led to the dismissal of its head, Walter Porras, and facilitated the downfall of retired Colonel Lenin Cerna from his position as FSLN Secretary of Organization.
With Cerna removed from his functions and his network of operators weakened, Moncada became the sole political authority in the FSLN Secretariat. Formally, he never held an official position and never appeared in Ortega and Murillo’s government organizational chart, but no one disputed his influence over power as guardian of the presidential couple’s private affairs.
First published in Spanish by Confidencial and Translated and posted in English by Havana Times.