’Orlando’ exposes to ’Confidencial’ the spiral of corruption that involves a company registered in Miami and the Nicaraguan authorities
14ymedio, Madrid, 15 July 2024 — “This is a mafia, it’s like a Netflix or Hollywood movie.” This is how forceful a former official of the Administrative Company of International Airports of Nicaragua (EAAI) is, who, under condition of anonymity, reveals to two media —Confidencial and Esta Semana — how the trafficking of migrants from Managua to the United States operates through charter flights, largely involving Cubans.
In an interview published on Monday with Carlos Fernando Chamorro, founder and director of both media – which work from exile after President Daniel Ortega shut them down – the former official, an expert in airport services who calls himself “Orlando,” points to the company Easy Aviation, registered in Miami, Florida, as the main link in a whole spiral of corruption. This involves not only the airlines, but the EAAI itself, the Management of Migration and Civil Aeronautics.
“They use the institutions that are supposed to be serious to do something illicit, such as the transport of migrants who arrive in an irregular way,” says Orlando. He was in charge of the coordination and execution of the ground operation of both commercial and charter flights and resigned his position last year because of “discomfort with the management.”
“They use the institutions that are supposed to be serious to carry out something illicit, such as the transport of migrants who arrive in an irregular way”
According to his testimony, it all began in 2021, “with a Havana-Managua airlift to transport thousands of Cuban migrants to the United States, and has continued uninterruptedly for four years, diversifying with intercontinental flights.”
The date provided by Orlando coincides with the agreement between Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel and his Nicaraguan counterpart to allow the entry of Cuban nationals into the Central American country without a visa. The announcement came at the end of November of that year, after the frustrated Civic March for Change and four months after the historic demonstrations of 11J [11 July 2021], and was the starting signal of the greatest exodus in the history of Cuba.
At first, Orlando explains, charter flights in Nicaragua took place “in the context of the pandemic,” to repatriate American and European citizens to their countries or Nicaraguans who were abroad and had been stranded when commercial flights were closed due to COVID-19. Afterwards, there began to be “flights from the Caribbean, with mainly Cuban citizens, who came to Nicaragua to do shopping tourism, according to what was proposed to us in the meetings before handling these flights.”
It soon became clear to them that Cubans were not going to Managua for that purpose: “Several months later, all the workers already knew that the main reason for the entry was the trampoline to the United States.” As an example, he says that the planes arrived completely full, “with 150 Cuban passengers and only five returned, maximum ten.” The nationals of the Island, his story continues, “were amazed to see the refrigerators full of food. So we now knew that they didn’t come to do shopping tourism, because of the way they behaved.”
“They were amazed to see the refrigerators full of food. So we now knew that they didn’t come to do shopping tourism, because of the way they behaved”
Every day there were “at least” five flights between 50 and 150 passengers, the media indicate, which remained constant until the Biden Administration established the humanitarian parole program, in early 2023. Then they decreased.
Confidential estimates, in any case, suggest that between May 2023 and May 2024 1,475 charter flights with more than 191,000 passengers landed in Managua, “most of them coming from Haiti, Cuba, the Dominican Republic and other Caribbean countries.” Between 30 and 40 intercontinental charter flights “also came from Libya, Senegal, India, several Asian countries and from European airports in Germany and France.”
Some of the latter are precisely in Washington’s crosshairs for considering them accomplices of illegal immigration in its territory. Some evidence also points to the fact that part of the irregular migratory swell may be related to Vladimir Putin’s interest in destabilizing the United States. On June 13, the State Department announced visa restrictions for the executive of an unnamed airline that the independent Nicaraguan press identified as Mohamed Ben Ayad and Ghadames Airlines, from Libya. Sources of 14ymedio in Tripoli, however, revealed that the airline had just been sold and that it is in the name of one of the sons of Marshal Khalifa Haftar, an ally of the Russian president.
Some evidence also points to the fact that part of the irregular migratory swell may be related to Vladimir Putin’s interest in destabilizing the United States
Orlando, the source of Confidencial, explains that for the entire operation, Easy Aviation’s role of intermediary was fundamental, whose website, checks 14ymedio, is out of service. The company is registered in Miami, notes Carlos F. Chamorro, at least since 2018, but has its offices in the Managua Airport. At its head, explains the journalist, are three Nicaraguan citizens – Silvio Otero Quiroz, Geovanny Jaén Arróliga and Iván Abdul Olivares Lacayo -, one of them also with American nationality.
As Orlando explains, “Easy Aviation hired the charter airline to make a certain route. Subsequently, it managed and paid for Civil Aeronautics permits. And when the plane was in the country or landed at the airport, it paid the Airport Company for the services performed, that is, the landing and takeoff rights, operations and ramp personnel, among other services, and was responsible for charging the end customer, that is, the travel agency or the migrants directly.”
The former official points to Geovanny Jaén, manager and partner of Easy Aviation, as the key person throughout the process: “He gets the Civil Aeronautics permits approved expeditiously. Precisely because of this, the Civil Aeronautics authorities do not object, and once he has the permits, he sends the schedule and flight plans to us at the airport. Likewise, once the flight has arrived and the operation has ended, he is immediately paid in cash for the private flights [in] the offices of the Airport Management Company, once the plane takes off. Geovanny Jaén, through Easy Aviation, is the only one who exercises the control and coordinates the operation of these charter flights of migrants at the Managua Airport . There is no other company that is responsible for handling or carrying out this operation.”
“They pay 150 dollars for a safe-conduct pass, and they don’t stamp the passports of migrants”
Being registered in the United States, Orlando argues, the firm has access to a network of charter airline companies. The main ones are Sky High and Air Century, registered in the Dominican Republic, and Viva Aerobus, from Mexico. That the Mexican commercial airline was involved in these flights surprised the former EAAI employee: “They do not regularly make charter flights; however, they operated routes via Havana-Cancún, Cancun-Managua, and they only operate with the Airbus 320 aircraft with a capacity of up to 186 passengers. I am surprised because they regularly only operate commercial flights from Mexico to the United States and Central America, and I was surprised to see that they were mainly transporting Cuban migrants.”
As for the Venezuelan Conviasa, which is not a charter but a commercial airline, it is also used to transport migrants, said Orlando: “Before the pandemic, Conviasa carried out flights from Havana to Managua in the context of shopping tourism for Cuban citizens, who were going to buy at the Eastern Market and return to Cuba. But later, at the time of the migrant boom towards the southern border of the United States, Conviasa was only transporting migrants. There was no shopping tourism, and it was operated that way with a direct flight from Havana to Managua, with two different types of aircraft. They had an Embraer 190, with a capacity of approximately 100 passengers, and an Airbus 340, with a capacity of up to 320, 350 passengers.”
The complicity of the Nicaraguan authorities is flagrant, according to what Orlando explains to Chamorro. The EAAI organizes and supervises all the flights at Managua Airport and “subordinates itself to Guerrero Castillo, the commissioner of the National Police.” It also has responsibility for Civil Aeronautics, as a regulatory body, by “giving permission and certifying that flights are operated in a safe way.”
The last link in the chain is Migration, which is responsible for determining whether to admit migrants. “If they are supposed to be tourists who arrive, there has to be a guideline, a hotel reservation, as is done in Panama, and you have to bring 500 dollars in cash or 1,000 dollars, depending, and they don’t,” explains Orlando, who says that Cubans are not monitored for this. What’s more, “they are charged a fee, a kind of extortion”: “They pay 150 dollars for a safe-conduct pass, and they don’t even stamp the passports of Cuban migrants.”
According to this former official, “the Migration agents already know. They already have the order. They send the migrants to a special line.” When they leave the airport, Orlando recalls, “they are already beginning their journey on foot to the United States.”
Orlando suggests that international authorities, including the UN and the United States, should be invited to investigate the financial plot in order to end this “mafia”: “The financial origin of the operation is Easy Aviation, the company that is responsible for the handling of charter flights, and it is based in Miami, Florida. From there you could easily check the financial statements, the movements of money, the movements of the deposits that are made to the different airlines and the origin of that money as well.”
Translated by Regina Anavy
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