Sandinistas Give Millions in State Assets to Followers

Since losing the Nicaraguan election two months ago, the Sandinista revolutionaries who leave office today have given away millions of dollars in state-owned land, houses, cattle, vehicles, boats, radio stations and building materials to members of their own party, according to government workers and members of the incoming administration.

Aides to President-elect Violeta Barrios de Chamorro, after transition talks with Sandinista officials in each governmental agency, expressed alarm this week over what they called a systematic looting of public assets--and official moves to conceal it.

They said the losses could slow their efforts to revive an economy crippled by years of war with the Contras and Sandinista mismanagement.

“We are about to inherit the shell of a government,” said Guillermo Quant, a Chamorro aide. “Until we look at the books, we won’t know how thin the shell is.”

Sandinista authorities have defended some giveaways, such as cars and houses, as legitimate rewards for revolutionary service, and they claim to have collected token payments for some property. But other cases involve mysterious pilfering and accusations of embezzlement.

In one case documented by Chamorro aides, three container ships and two tankers of the government-owned shipping fleet have disappeared and turned up for sale in New York. Also missing, neighboring farmers say, are 7,000 of the 17,000 head of cattle on a state-owned ranch.

Employees report that an entire resort--five bungalows in the Masaya Volcano national park--was dismantled and trucked away under army guard one night.

Big-time thievery has hit little towns like Diria, southeast of Managua, where 3,000 slabs of cement for a new cemetery wall and all 12 sewing machines at the sewing cooperative vanished, residents said.

“President Daniel Ortega is blaming the state of the economy on North American aggression, but in these last few weeks the aggression is more direct--it’s from the Sandinistas themselves,” said Salvador Murillo, a Tourism Ministry employee. “They’re telling their people that they will soon be out of work, so it’s time to grab everything they can.”

The Sandinistas have denied some of the more blatant stealing of which they are accused. But they declined in recent meetings with Chamorro’s transition teams to hand over the inventories, balance sheets and bank records of any government entity until the last day.

Jaime Icabalceta, a coordinator of the transition teams, said that the Sandinistas apparently sold cheaply or gave away most of the state’s collective farms in recent weeks, along with most of the late-model vehicles assigned to government ministries. Some ministries are turning over fewer than five cars.

In southernmost Rivas province, he said, six of the 10 sprawling cattle collectives were privatized. One was given to the Sandinista army and another to Ivan Garcia, outgoing director of the state television network.

An irony of the situation is that the Sandinistas, after a decade of commitment to a fairly centralized economy, have suddenly embraced Chamorro’s free-market principles. They are preempting her promise to sell most of the state’s property--acquiring many of the goods themselves at bargain prices and undercutting her government’s ability to raise cash.

“They are sucking the state dry to set up their own companies,” said an American businessman. “They are creating a corporate state within a state.”

Cars have been hot topics of discussion in government agencies during the lame-duck period. At the Internal Commerce Ministry, 15 section heads already assigned cars got to keep them without charge, and 12 other Sandinista activists applied for the privilege of buying five other cars for $30 each, an employee said.

Some ministries even bought new cars just to sell them at huge discounts to loyal employees. Casa Pellas, a major importer, reported selling about 160 new Japanese cars, trucks and jeeps in March and April--double the pre-election rate. The government bought most of them.

When the opposition newspaper La Prensa reported that a state transport firm had given 12 trucks at no cost to Sandinista employees, company director Guileobaldo Lacayo defended the practice.

“It wouldn’t be fair to let these trucks end up in the hands of people who never contributed to this enterprise,” he said.

Aides to Chamorro, the first Nicaraguan opposition leader to assume office in a peaceful transition, say the looting is worse than in 1979, when the Sandinistas deposed dictator Anastasio Somoza and inherited a sacked, virtually bankrupt economy.

“When Somoza fell, people took advantage of the chaos and power vacuum to steal little things--refrigerators, television sets, sound equipment, furniture, food, clothes,” said Vice President-elect Virgilio Godoy. “This time, there is an appearance of normality, but the looting is hidden and much bigger in scale. This time it is ordered and directed by the government.”

Sandinista Vice President Sergio Ramirez and other officials have made strong statements denying such charges. But Ramirez admitted that a law passed last month by the Sandinista-dominated National Assembly had aroused suspicion. The law declared government officials immune from any crimes committed up to the time they leave office. Godoy called it “the first law in history to sanction looting in advance.”

Another law passed last month gave Sandinistas title to homes confiscated over the past decade. Since then, Sandinista military officers have moved into a complex of 40 state-owned homes vacated by Cuban military advisers who were withdrawn from Nicaragua.

“An officer with several stripes on his uniform came to see this house where the Cubans lived,” said a maid dismissed by the new owners. “The officer told this other man that he liked the house but would have problems because it had only one garage space and he drives two cars.”

The high-level scramble for homes and cars appears to have fostered a now-or-never atmosphere in Managua, as the poor also try to improve their status. Thousands of homeless people have invaded empty lots and built shacks in the hope that the new government will not chase them out. Sandinista-led labor unions have staged eight strikes against government agencies in the past week, some of them winning 100% wage increases.

Alcides Altamirano, 29, the Sandinista Youth leader in the city of Granada, is doing well for himself in this atmosphere. The house and car assigned him by the government four years ago have just been given to him at no cost. A few days ago, he seized a plot near Managua’s Roberto Huembes market, along with other squatters, and is building a new house with concrete slabs he says he acquired cheaply from “a contact” in the Construction Ministry. He expects to sell the other house for $2,500.

So blatant is the looting from the ministries, says Altamirano, that he feels his action are within the limits of ethical behavior.

“Some of those taking advantage of this situation were never Sandinistas,” he said. “They are technocrats, opportunists who called themselves Sandinistas to rise to high positions.”

Fearing theft or sabotage by their Sandinistas bosses, employees have shut down the Ruben Dario National Theater until the new government takes possession.

According to an agreement between the incoming and outgoing governments, all state property is to be accounted for and handed over, a process that started Monday. But when Chamorro’s media aides called on Arnulfo Urrutia, president of a state corporation that owned 17 of the country’s 35 radio stations, he announced that the corporation had been dissolved.

Fourteen of the stations, it turned out, had been turned over to local governments that will not change hands until May 10, and two had been sold, one for $5,000. The other, Radio Primerisima, had been given free to a cooperative of its Sandinistas workers, headed by Urrutia himself.

“After 10 years, we have a right to keep this,” he told Chamorro’s aides.

The 34 fishing boats of a state shrimp-fishing cooperative in Bluefields, on the Caribbean coast, met a similar fate. The cooperative--with its boats--was turned into a private entity, run by its Sandinista founder.

La Prensa declared last week that “de-capitalizers of the state” will be “condemned as common criminals” after the new controller general audits government agencies. It added a caveat emptor: Anyone buying goods stolen from the government runs the risk of losing them, no money back.

But the new administration is divided over how much can be done to recover the booty. Prosecuting so many Sandinistas, Godoy said, would be “uncomfortable,” and in many cases impossible, given the likelihood that incriminating records are being destroyed.

As Chamorro’s aides debated the issue, thieves struck the state-owned country club where the new president is to receive visiting heads of state tonight. They stole paintings, refrigerators and furniture. Workers there blamed the club’s Sandinista management.

CHAMORRO SURPRISE--A Sandinista will reportedly be kept as army chief of staff. A10