The Biden administration is ratcheting up pressure on President Daniel Ortega’s authoritarian rule in Nicaragua, banning Americans from doing business in the nation’s gold industry and stripping the US visas of 500 government insiders, US officials said.
The actions are the latest attempt by the US to hold the former Sandinista guerrilla leader accountable for his continued attacks on human rights and democracy in the Central American country as well his continued security cooperation with Russia.
Previous rounds of sanctions have focused on Mr Ortega, his wife and vice president, Rosario Murillo, and members of their family and inner circle.
The new executive order President Joe Biden will sign greatly expands a Trump-era decree declaring Mr Ortega’s hijacking of democratic norms, undermining of the rule of law and use of political violence against opponents a threat to the US’s national security, according to US officials.
Together with sanctions being announced by the US Treasury Department, the order makes it illegal for Americans to do business with Nicaragua’s gold industry.
It is the first time the US has identified a specific sector of the economy as off-limits and can be expanded in the future to include other industries believed to fund Mr Ortega’s rule, the US officials said.
The executive order also paves the way for the US to restrict investment and trade with Nicaragua — a move recalling the punishing embargo imposed by the US in the 1980s during Mr Ortega’s first stint as president following the country’s civil war.
The Biden administration’s targeting of the gold industry could sap Mr Ortega’s government of one of its biggest sources of revenue. Gold was the country’s largest export in 2020 and the country, already the largest producer of the precious metal in Central America, is looking to double output in the next five years.
As part of Monday’s actions, the State Department will also be pulling the US visas of more than 500 Nicaraguan individuals and their family members who either work for the Ortega government or help formulate, implement and benefit from policies that undermine democracy in the country, the US officials said.
Previously it froze the US assets of the defence minister and other members of the security forces tied to the shuttering of more than 1,000 non-governmental organisations.
Previously, the Biden administration also sanctioned the state-owned mining company. It also reallocated the country’s sugar quota, taking away a valuable US subsidy worth millions of dollars every year.
Nicaraguans began fleeing their country in 2018, initially to neighbouring Costa Rica, after Mr Ortega violently put down massive street protests.
Then in 2021 security forces began rounding up leading opposition leaders, including seven potential challengers to Mr Ortega ahead of that year’s presidential elections. Without a meaningful challenger, Mr Ortega coasted to a fourth consecutive five-year term.
