The Sandinistas' Greedy Goodbye

Whatever the shortcomings of the Chamorro government, they pale in comparison with the Sandinistas' shameless pillaging of the country during the two months between their electoral defeat and the day Violeta Barrios de Chamorro took the helm. Nicaraguans refer to those rapacious weeks as "la pinata," after the papier-mache animals that children whack with a stick so they can plunder the candy stuffed inside.

While estimates of the booty go as high as $700 million, the full extent of Sandinista looting will never be known. By order of the outgoing government, Central Bank, Treasury and comptroller records from February to April 1990 were destroyed. But TIME has obtained partial documentation of their greedy goodbye to power.

Former President Daniel Ortega Saavedra, who the morning after his defeat proclaimed, "We were born poor, and we'll be satisfied to die poor," had a last-minute change of heart. In April the President's office ordered the withdrawal of $3.6 million in U.S. currency from the Central Bank, plus the equivalent of $5 million more in Nicaraguan cordobas. Francisco Mayorga, who, as Chamorro's first Central Bank president, inherited the mess that the Sandinistas left behind, estimates that a total of $24 million was looted from the bank.

Ortega is still living in a house seized from Jaime Morales Carazo and valued at $950,000, including antiques and an art collection. Last April Ortega paid a token $2,500 to the former Sandinista government for the deed to the house, which is protected from prying eyes by a high wall decorated with festive murals. Other top Sandinistas also retired in style. Miguel D'Escoto, the rotund priest and ex-Foreign Minister, paid only $13,000 for one of the capital's plushest mansions.

In the countryside the Sandinistas grabbed ranches and farms. Wilfredo Lopez Palma, an assembly deputy, took 2,650 acres in the department of Rivas. Luis Felipe Perez, the Sandinista mayor of the city of Leon, acquired a 600-acre farm. Mario Hurtado Jimenez, who headed the state Corporation of Aviculture, leased a chicken farm to himself on easy-to-pay terms. His rent: 500 dozen eggs a month.

State-owned enterprises became private overnight, with former Sandinista Cabinet ministers and army officers listed as executives. Chamorro's government is attempting to evict Ortega and a handful of other Sandinista squatters from their mansions. But for the most part, it has decided to ignore "la pinata." Says Antonio Lacayo, Chamorro's right-hand man: "In this country, political reality has more weight than the law."