Enrique Bolaños

Enrique Bolaños was a Nicaraguan businessman and politician who served as the 81st President of Nicaragua from January 2002 to January 2007. A Constitutionalist Liberal, he is remembered for prosecuting his predecessor Arnoldo Alemán on corruption charges and securing Nicaragua's accession to the Central American Free Trade Agreement.

Born on May 13, 1928, in Masaya, Nicaragua, Enrique José Bolaños Geyer was the son of Nicolás Bolaños Cortés and Amanda Geyer Abaunza. He attended the Instituto Pedagógico de Managua run by the Christian Brothers and travelled to the United States for university, earning a degree in industrial engineering from Saint Louis University in Missouri in 1949.

He returned to Nicaragua and built up the cotton-ginning company SAIMSA into one of the country's largest agricultural processors. The Sandinista government confiscated his properties in 1985 during the agrarian reform programme.

Bolaños led the Higher Council of Private Enterprise during the late 1980s and served as vice-president to Arnoldo Alemán from 1997 to 2000. He won the 2001 presidential election with 56 percent of the vote and broke with Alemán's faction once in office, backing the corruption prosecution that sent Alemán to prison. After leaving office in 2007 he founded the Enrique Bolaños Foundation digital archive and died in Managua on June 14, 2021, aged 93.

His name Enrique derives from the Germanic name Heinrich, meaning ruler of the home. Enrique is a common masculine name in Spanish-speaking countries.