Nicaragua's Decree 3 confiscated Somoza family property in 1979, and Somoza was killed in Asunción in 1980

Anastasio Somoza Debayle was the third Somoza to rule Nicaragua in a family line that lasted 43 years. When he fled on 17 July 1979 he personally controlled 22 percent of the country's farmland. The family also owned the national airline, two steamship companies, banks and insurance firms (Christian Science Monitor, 19 September 1980). Britannica gives the family's reputed wealth as US$500 million. Decree No. 3, published on 22 August 1979, let the Attorney General seize all property of the Somoza family and of officers and officials who had left the country since December 1977. A 1986 study in Nueva Sociedad found Somoza-linked land was under 20 percent of the country's farm area. Somoza went into exile in Paraguay under Alfredo Stroessner. At 10:30 a.m. on 17 September 1980, a commando of the Argentine Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo attacked his armored Mercedes-Benz in central Asunción with rifles and a rocket launcher. The attack killed Somoza, his driver and his financial adviser. He is buried in Miami^†. In 2005 the family said its shares in Nicaragua's cement company had never been confiscated, and the dispute turned on a Supreme Court ruling that the decree did not reach companies.