LatinNews Daily - 6 January 2025

Central America: On 27 December the US Department of State issued its latest iteration of its ‘Corrupt and Undemocratic Actors’ list (the so-called ‘Engel List’), which was first issued in 2021 and included individuals from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras. The latest version, which also includes individuals from Nicaragua, features 27 new additions. These include two from El Salvador (José Edgardo Bruno Ventura, alias ‘Brother’, accused of drug trafficking, and Nercy Montano, a former mayor of Soyapango municipality, San Salvador department) and two from Guatemala (Jorge Mondal Chew, former president of the board of directors of Guatemalan bank Banco de los Trabajadores [Bantrab] and Claudia Paniagua, a constitutional court magistrate). It also includes three individuals from Honduras: Sonia Marlina Dubón, a supreme court magistrate, Ebal Díaz, former secretary of the presidency (2018-2022), and Lourdes Pamela Blanco Luque, a private lawyer. The rest were from Nicaragua, all of whom were from the academic community – a response to the efforts by the authoritarian government led by President Daniel Ortega to suppress dissent which have included the closure of Jesuit-run Universidad Centroamericana (UCA) in August 2023. The latest Nicaraguans to be sanctioned include Almarina Oliveira Solís Santos, the vice president of Nicaragua’s national council of universities (CNU); Roberto Enrique Flores Díaz, the secretary of the CNU; and Jaime López Lowery, the CNU’s technical secretary.

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