Russian Espionage Center Operates at Mokoron Military Base in Managua

In recent years, a Nicaraguan Army base located on the Mokoron hill just south of Managua, has become one of Russia's main espionage centers, according to sources linked to the military. Sources who have had access to the military installation claim that Russian officials are the only ones who can operate the equipment and access the information gathered. Nicaraguan officers are limited to providing “security” at the base.

The Army's Directorate of Military Intelligence and Counterintelligence (DICIM) operates at the Mokoron base, known as Unit 502. As part of Nicaragua’s national defense strategy, this unit has for years processed the information received via the direction finding system, which geographically locates telephone, television or radio signals generated in the radioelectric spectrum.

According to a source currently outside the country who is linked to the Army, the Russian antennas and equipment were installed in several Nicaraguan military bases in mid-2017. The process was directed by four Russian officers, who were the only ones who knew how the devices worked. Nicaraguan officers and soldiers were limited to carrying out construction work.

The Russian officers were accompanied by a Nicaraguan lieutenant colonel who served as translator to orient and train the Nicaraguan military personnel. According to sources, the installation and commissioning of the Russian equipment was supervised by Brigadier General Leonel Gutiérrez López, head of the DICIM.

Antennas and equipment at nine locations in Nicaragua

In addition to Cerro Mokorón, where the coordination center is located, the Army has antennas and equipment in eight other points of the national territory for the direction-finding system: 

• Cerro Casitas in Chinandega.
•  Cosigüina Volcano in Chinandega.
•  El Naranjo in San Juan del Sur.
• Las Manos in Nueva Segovia.
• Cerro Mogoton, on the border between Nicaragua and Honduras.
• Cordillera Amerrisque in Chontales.
• Bilwi in the North Caribbean Coast.
• Peñas Blancas on the border between Nicaragua and Costa Rica.

To the radio direction-finding system that monitors the activity of alleged subversive and drug trafficking groups and the communications of neighboring armies, the Russians have added the SORM-3 software to spy and listen to the communications of their “targets”, as well as the so-called “internal enemies” of Daniel Ortega's dictatorship, according to sources.

Five satellite dishes in Mokoron

The Mokoron base is composed of several areas that are used for technical equipment, a conference room, protocol areas, and residential areas.

A “giant” satellite dish was installed on the northwest side of the military complex at the end of 2017, along with other Russian equipment which was installed in one of the surrounding buildings.

Other dishes have been added in recent years. There is now a total of five satellite dishes in Mokoron: the “giant” one, a large one, two medium-sized ones, and a small one, according to satellite images obtained through the online geographic information system Google Earth.

A source close to the Army explained that the largest satellite dish at Mokoron is “similar” to the one installed at the Global Navigation Satellite System (Glonass) ground station on the slopes of the Nejapa lagoon, on the outskirts of Managua. This satellite base, inaugurated in April 2017, is also managed by the Russians and is considered by experts to be a Russian intelligence center.

“Everyone talks about the base at Nejapa, but the real Russian espionage center is in Mokoron. Few people know about the existence of that satellite dish,” the source said.

Since January 2013, the military base has been bordered by a wall about ten feet high. The only access point is guarded by soldiers. The Mokoron hill borders the National Autonomous University of Nicaragua (UNAN-Managua), the Los Ladinos district, and the Miguel Bonilla Obando neighborhood.

A document of the Attorney General's Office states that the core area of the Mokoron hill, which occupies some 73 acres, “is registered in the name of the Military Social Security Institute (IPSM) and of citizens who have acquired plots through successive transfers,” according to a publication by the newspaper La Prensa.

The IPSM is the business arm of the Army, whose millions of dollars in funds are secretly administered by the Armed Forces.

Spying on embassies and possible “traitors” of the dictatorship

The source outside Nicaragua who is linked to the Army commented that the military commanders “have informed” their subordinates that the Russian equipment is “being used” for soil studies and hurricane analysis, but “everyone knows” that the “main” use is “to monitor the entire perimeter of Nicaragua and to provide information to their colleagues or whoever requests it.”

“Access [to the Mokoron base] is very restricted. They’re tracking all types of communications, mainly of foreign embassies, and particularly of the ‘gringo’ embassy. They’re also tracking some internal [phone] numbers, although the National Police have a very well developed system for that,” said another source close to the Armed Forces.

According to the source, “the DICIM is totally subordinated to the Russian technology. No Nicaraguan [military officer] knows how far their tracking and listening abilities reach.”

Under the command of General Julio César Avilés, the Nicaraguan Army has bowed to the authoritarian drift of the Ortega-Murillo binomial, and has become one more apparatus of control and repression of the dictatorship.

A former high-ranking military officer commented that Ortega has increased the capacities of “self-surveillance” to detect possible traitors. However, he questioned: “What opposition are they going to spy on in Nicaragua, if all the opposition leaders are already outside the country, either banished or self-exiled?”

“This project with the Russians is for internal espionage, to monitor the military itself, the Police, and the people trusted by Daniel [Ortega] and Rosario [Murillo],” said the former military officer.

Combining radio direction finding with SORM-3

Since the 2018 civic rebellion, Vladimir Putin’s regime has trained Nicaraguan security forces in methods of repression and espionage, according to Ortega’s own admission as well as independent investigations.

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In September 2023, Ortega acknowledged that a Russian police training center installed in Managua has worked “to confront the coup plotters,” as the dictator calls the Nicaraguans who criticize him.

This training center, headed by Russian Colonel General Oleg Anatolyevich Plokhoi, is also tasked with training “a cadre of intelligence agents” familiar with and loyal to Russia, so that they can operate in Nicaragua and throughout Central America, according to the study, “Dangerous Alliances: Russia's Advance in Latin America,” prepared in December 2022 by U.S. researchers Douglas Farah and Marianne Richardson, for the National Defense University's Institute for National Strategic Studies.

More recently, in March of this year, Ortega authorized the Russian regime to finance and build a police “Instruction Center” in Managua which, according to national security experts, will serve to “mask” a Russian spy agency.

​​Even though one center already exists, and there’s the possibility of another, the Mokoron base offers value added to Putin's regime and its Nicaraguan counterpart: the entire radio direction-finding system installed in Nicaragua, to which they can add the System for Operational Research Activities (SORM, for its acronym in Russian).

A cybersecurity expert explained that the direction-finding system at the Mokoron base can be used to detect a “signal,” which is then “monitored” by the SORM-3 system.

SORM-3 software in Nicaragua

With direction finding, it is possible to physically find a device and track it, but it does not work for listening to that device. With SORM-3, the same device can be tapped and all its activity can be monitored. This information can be saved in a file and analyzed later.

The intercepted and stored information allows Russia to draw up an “internet portrait” of the spied-on citizens.

This technological tool is used for phone and internet surveillance, and allows operators to monitor credit card transactions, email, phone calls, text messages, social networks, Wi-Fi networks and forum postings. There is no evidence yet that the system can breach instant messaging applications with end-to-end encryption, such as WhatsApp and Signal.

The study by Douglas Farah and Marianne Richardson revealed that the dictatorship has been using SORM-3 for spying in Nicaragua since 2018, given that access to the technology has been part of the operations of a network of groups and individuals “with deep ties” to Russian intelligence and the former Soviet secret police KGB, “who specialize in cryptology and cyber activity.”

The cybersecurity expert warned that Internet providers allow government espionage and that these private companies should be asked about “to what extent they are facilitating government espionage.”

The expert recalled that, although it requires the authorization of a judge, telephone tapping is permitted under Nicaraguan law. The Nicaraguan judiciary is controlled by the Ortega dictatorship.

The regime’s monitoring methods

Russian espionage from the Mokoron base adds to other surveillance methods used by the dictatorship, as reported by CONFIDENCIAL in an October 2022 article about the existence in Nicaragua of 39 “fake antennas” used for electronic surveillance that facilitate capturing private information of users.

The publication, based on the analysis of the South Lighthouse organization, a human rights organization dedicated to investigating technologies, and the study by the Fake Antenna Detection Project (FADe Project), detailed the sites where these “fake antennas” or IMSI-Catcher devices operate, which include the vicinity of the Hugo Chavez traffic circle and the International Airport in Managua.

IMSI-Catcher devices act as “fake antennas” that intercept phone signals and capture traffic from mobile devices. This includes regular phone calls, the destination or origin of these calls, text messages, SIM card codes, phone locations and in some cases, direct eavesdropping of the phone conversations.

In October of 2018, CONFIDENCIAL reported that the Ortega dictatorship had bought spying and intelligence-gathering software from private Israeli technology companies. This software can collect all of a smartphone’s activity, such as the user's location, sites visited, and personal contacts. In addition, these technological tools can turn the phone into a secret recording device.

According to an investigation by the Israeli daily newspaper Haaretz, these programs have been used in several countries, including Nicaragua, to “track down and arrest human rights activists, persecute members of the LGBT community, and silence citizens who criticize their government.”

Political surveillance in Nicaragua has been reported since before 2018. In 2017, the Citizen Lab Institute of the University of Toronto, Canada, included Nicaragua among the Latin American countries that spy on their citizens. The same year, the Glonass ground station was inaugurated and the installation of Russian antennas and equipment began in Nicaraguan military bases, including those at Cerro Mokorón, controlled by Russian intelligence.

This article was published in Spanish in Confidencial and translated by our staff. To get the most relevant news from our English coverage delivered straight to your inbox, subscribe to The Dispatch.