Nicaragua creates new fuel firms after December US sanctions
Associated Press | Hagadone News Network | UPDATED 6 years, 7 months AGO
MANAGUA, Nicaragua (AP) — Nicaragua’s Parliament approved the creation Tuesday of four state companies that will handle the importation, storage, distribution and sales of oil and gas, two months after the country’s main energy company was sanctioned by Washington for allegedly laundering money for family members of President Daniel Ortega and then sold to the government days later.
The measure passed without debate, analysis in committee or consultation with other government or business entities under rules for urgent legislation in a Parliament controlled by Ortega’s Sandinista party.
Wálmaro Gutiérrez, a Sandinista who heads the legislature’s economic commission, called the decision “wise” and said it would “guarantee better service, high-quality and efficiency,” through specialization by the different companies.
Members of the opposition, who have accused Ortega of running the petroleum sector without being accountable to Parliament, saw self-interest behind the measure.
Creation of the new companies is an attempt “to evade the U.S. Treasury Department sanctions, in case they sanction them again,” said lawmaker Jimmy Blandón of the opposition Liberal Constitutionalist Party.
Treasury levied the sanctions Dec. 12 on the fuel distributor DNP, accusing it of being used by members of the Ortega family for their personal enrichment.
DNP, along with Albanisa, had commercialized crude from Venezuela since 2007, the year Ortega returned to power. Albanisa was founded the same year and was linked to Venezuelan state oil company PDVSA, also sanctioned by Washington in 2019.
Days after the December sanctions were announced, Ortega’s government nationalized the company and took over its assets — a move that was also fast-tracked by Parliament.
The four new entities are known as Enigas, Eniplanh, Enicom and Enih, the latter of which focuses on exploration and exploitation of hydrocarbons.
Sandinista lawmaker Edwin Castro said that in the case of Enih, the government offered incentives for exploration on Nicaragua’s Pacific coast, though without identifying wha t c ompany benefited.
“It is possible that if we do not find oil, at least we may find gas,” Castro said.
ARTICLES BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
Hong Kong police arrest 4 from university student union
HONG KONG (AP) — Four members of a Hong Kong university student union were arrested Wednesday for allegedly advocating terrorism by paying tribute to a person who stabbed a police officer and then killed himself, police said.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.
For South Sudan mothers, COVID-19 shook a fragile foundation
JUBA, South Sudan (AP) — Paska Itwari Beda knows hunger all too well. The young mother of five children — all of them under age 10 — sometimes survives on one bowl of porridge a day, and her entire family is lucky to scrape together a single daily meal, even with much of the money Beda makes cleaning offices going toward food. She goes to bed hungry in hopes her children won’t have to work or beg like many others in South Sudan, a country only a decade old and already ripped apart by civil war.