TRAINING CENTER OF THE RUSSIAN MINISTRY OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS IN MANAGUA
Aliases
RUSSIA-NICARAGUA ANTI-NARCOTICS TRAINING CENTER
MVD TRAINING CENTER
TRAINING CENTER OF THE MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION IN MANAGUA
CENTRO DE CAPACITACION DEL MINISTERIO DEL INTERIOR DE LA FEDERACION DE RUSIA EN MANAGUA
CENTRO DE CAPACITACION ANTINARCOTICO RUSIA-NICARAGUA
Address
Las Colinas, 3a Etapa, Managua, 14199, Nicaragua
Official reason
Today, the Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is targeting the Ortega-Murillo regime’s repression of the Nicaraguan people and its ability to manipulate the gold sector and profit from corrupt operations. Treasury is imposing sanctions on three Nicaragua-based entities, the Training Center of the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs in Managua (RTC); Compania Minera Internacional, Sociedad Anónima (COMINTSA); and Capital Mining Investment Nicaragua, Sociedad Anónima (Capital Mining), pursuant to Executive Order (E.O.) 13851, as amended.
The RTC is a Nicaragua-based subdivision of the Government of the Russian Federation’s (GOR) Ministry of Internal Affairs, which trains those under the Ortega-Murillo regime’s command under the Russian authoritarian government’s playbook of oppression. It is a key actor in the Nicaraguan regime’s repression of civil society and unjust detention and imprisonment of individuals for expressing dissent, or otherwise peacefully exercising their human rights and fundamental freedoms. Since its opening in Managua in October 2017, the RTC has been operating in Managua, training members of the NNP as part of a bilateral engagement between Nicaragua and Russia, Russian law enforcement officials at the RTC have trained members of the NNP, which has enabled the regime’s brutal repressive tactics, training the NNP to conduct repression and tyrannical persecution in support of persecutions of the Nicaraguan people. The NNP is a central actor in the Ortega-Murillo regime’s violent oppression of the Nicaraguan people. The RTC’s support of the NNP helps maintain the cycle of violent oppression in Nicaragua. The NNP is a repressive state apparatus, carrying out extrajudicial killings, using live ammunition against peaceful protests, and even participating in death squads. The RTC in Nicaragua, by admission of President Ortega himself, trains Nicaraguan law enforcement officers to better confront “coup plotters,” referring to those citizens who dare to publicly voice their opposition to the regime.
The RTC is being designated pursuant to E.O. 13851, as amended, for having materially assisted, sponsored, or provided financial, material, or technological support for, or goods or services in support of, the NNP.
On November 27, 2018, the President, invoking the authority of, inter alia, the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (50 U.S.C. 1701–1706) (IEEPA), issued Executive Order 13851 (83 FR 61505, November 29, 2018) (E.O. 13851). In E.O. 13851, the President determined that the situation in Nicaragua, including the violent response by the Government of Nicaragua to the protests that began on April 18, 2018, and the Ortega regime's systematic dismantling and undermining of democratic institutions and the rule of law, its use of indiscriminate violence and repressive tactics against civilians, and its corruption leading to the destabilization of Nicaragua's economy, constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and declared a national emergency to deal with that threat.
