Nicaraguan Attorney General Requests Official Standing in the Case

Although we still haven’t been served with the lawsuit papers, this week there have been two concrete advances in the land case:

First, we have now filed a countersuit against Yelba Carvajal demanding 600,000 córdobas (roughly $31,500) in damages resulting from her filing a frivolous lawsuit.

Second, the Nicaraguan Attorney General’s office has requested official standing in the case before the trial judge, based on two the factors that give the government vested interest in the case: 1) The land involved in the case was awarded to the Cooperative Gabriel Cardenal No. 2 through an Agrarian Reform title, and 2) We are an international NGO, entities that the government is in charge of regulating.

The reason that the Attorney General’s office wants official standing in the case is to assure that our rights aren’t abused or that Yelba Carvajal (who – as the attorney general himself said in his letter to the US Ambassador – is well known for “unscrupulous” land deals) isn’t able to bribe a judge.

This request from the Attorney General’s office comes as very good news to us, because with someone from the attorney general’s office actively involved in the case, it’s hard for the judge to accept a bribe and rule against us.

Letter of Support from Attorney General of Nicaragua

We’re on standby still waiting to receive an official copy of the lawsuit, which we were assured would arrive ten days ago. We keep being told by the lawyer that for whatever reasons, the court is not proceeding with this in a timely fashion and we assume that’s because Yelba Carvajal’s lawyer is not pushing it. We don’t know what that means, so we’re just waiting.

Your efforts to help our case come to the attention of the Nicaraguan government have had concrete results – thank you again! Today we received a copy of a letter that the Attorney General of Nicaragua, Dr. Hernán Estrada, sent to the US Ambassador in Nicaragua, Paul Trivelli, in response to Trivelli’s letter to Estrada in relation to the case. In his letter, Dr. Estrada writes that the Attorney General’s office “will act in favor of Mr. Woodard [Mike, our legal representative], as we have knowledge of the recurring irregular activities of this Mrs. Carvajal Jirón in various transactions related to properties, in which she tends to speculate with Titles from the Agrarian Reform, divesting the beneficiaries of their rights by using various operative and legal influences.” Dr. Estrada went on to stress that our case is an “emblematic” case, as our organization “came to support our government in the most difficult years during the eighties, and I have confirmed to [Mike] that we will be part of the judicial litigation contributing in favor of the Foundation Jubilee House Community, because it deals with one of the methods used by unscrupulous subjects such as this woman.” This letter is important as it documents the Attorney General’s explicit intention to help our case.