MANAGUA (Dispatches) -- The U.S. has slapped sanctions on Nicaragua’s mining industry for “financing” the government of President Daniel Ortega, in the latest push against the Latin American nation’s leader who won a fourth consecutive term as president in November 2021.
President Joe Biden’s executive order gives the U.S. Treasury Department “the authority to target certain persons that operate or have operated in the gold sector of the Nicaraguan economy”, the department said in a statement.
It also allows Washington to bar new U.S. investments in Nicaraguan economic sectors, imports of certain products from the Central American nation, and exports by U.S. citizens of certain data-x-items to Nicaragua, it said, among other potential measures.
The Central American country’s economy grew by 10.3 percent in 2021, according to data from the World Bank.
Gold was Nicaragua’s main export last year, with total shipments abroad of the precious metal amounting to $867.6 million, and 79 percent of that going to the United States, according to central bank data.
As it shows, Ortega’s standing on the other side of the Ukraine-Russia conflict has angered U.S. officials and has provoked them to impose cruel sanctions on the Latin American nation under the false pretext of supporting human rights.
The United States has long been accused of interfering in the internal affairs of Nicaragua. Washington and the EU have already imposed sanctions against Ortega’s family members and allies.
Ortega, 75, who helped depose the right-wing Somoza family dictatorship in the late 1970s, has been in power for 15 consecutive years. He has ruled alongside his 70-year-old wife, the government’s official spokeswoman, since early 2007.