El Salvador Perspectives

  It's politically expedient to attack the corruption of a prior government. The tough part is making sure that your friends and allies don't engage in the same activities now that they are in power.    This sounds like something I would write today in El Salvador Perspectives.  But in fact, this was a quote from a post I wrote in June 2009 .  Mauricio Funes had just taken office as the first leftist president in El Salvador's history to much hope and fanfare and had just announced the formation of a commission to investigate acts of corruption in the government of his predecessor, Antonio Saca.   The commission was to be led by the Treasury Minister, Carlos Cáceres. Despite the announcement of an anti-corruption commission, the endemic practice of Salvadoran politicians enriching themselves at the public trough did not end.  In fact, we learned that Mauricio Funes found out from his predecessor Saca how secret slush funds controlled by the pres...

Corruption was on voters' minds in El Salvador when they rejected the traditional political parties  in El Salvador and elected Nayib Bukele president, whose campaign included the slogan "there's enough money when nobody steals."  Voters responded favorably to Bukele's calls to throw out thieves in government despite the fact that Bukele chose to run on the ticket of the GANA party, one of whose founders was Tony Saca, the former president who is now in prison for corruption, a party led by Guillermo Gallegos who also has a cloud of corruption allegations hanging over him. There is much work to be done to reduce endemic corruption in El Salvador.  Here are some of the more recent developments (mostly setbacks) in El Salvador's battle with corrupt officials. Supreme Judicial Court lets off dozens of possibly corrupt officials El Salvador's Supreme Judicial Court decided to close without action 79 cases of potential corruption by public officials, inc...

Former president of El Salvador Antonio ("Tony") Saca was sentenced today to 10 years in prison for corruption pursuant to a plea deal with the country's attorney general.  Saca governed the country from 2004-2009 after being elected on the ARENA party ticket and also made an unsuccessful bid for another term as president in 2014.  Today's sentence did not come as a surprise.   Saca had already confessed and provided the details of the corruption scheme.   The plead deal and confession allowed Attorney General Douglas Melendez to secure a conviction, something he has had a difficult time doing in high profile cases in the past two years. The conviction of Saca comes at a bad time for ARENA leading up to the presidential elections.   Saca's confessions include descriptions of how some of the embezzled funds were used to advance ARENA political campaigns.  (In the same way, Saca's presidential bid had been aided by part of $10 million...

The corruption trial of the former president of El Salvador, Antonio Saca, is drawing to a close.   Saca has already confessed to diverting more than $300 million in public funds.   Now he and his co-defendants will wait and learn their fate. The periodical El Faro has been reporting on the financial accounts which made this possible. Essentially, the Executive branch in El Salvador has been given a budget of funds by El Salvador's legislature which is treated as "under reserve" or secret.   These are discretionary funds where the president is supposed to decide where they should best be spent.    Presidents from both parties have treated these funds not only as discretionary, but as one for which they need not be accountable to anyone.   Government auditors are not granted access to the account spending.   No disclosure is made of how the money is used.   Presidential spokesmen refuse to answer questions f...

This article originally appeared in English on the website of InsightCrime , translated from the Spanish original at Revista Factum. By Bryan Avelar When former El Salvador president Antonio Saca admitted to being behind of one of the most well-known robberies in the country’s history, he knew that there was something good waiting for him. Seated in the witness chair, Saca described in a strong and clear voice how he and a group of his closest confidants embezzled more than $300 million of public funds during his five years in office. It’s unusual to recognize that theft brings benefits. But Saca, who was arrested in 2016, had made a deal with the Attorney General’s Office: If he confessed, he would face a lighter sentence. In a courtroom in San Salvador on August 9, 2018, Saca explained for the first time the plot behind the multimillion-dollar embezzlement scheme that took place between 2004 and 2009. The former president provided details on how he siphoned millions of...

I was on sabbatical from posting to El Salvador Perspectives for the last few weeks.   Here is a short summary of some of the recent news during that time.   I will be expanding on many of these stories in coming days. Tony Saca's confession to massive embezzlement and money laundering .   Former president Tony Saca has confessed to embezzling and money laundering charges involving more than $300 million in public funds during his administration.  His ongoing corruption trial has revealed a wide-ranging machine to divert funds from hidden accounts controlled by the presidency to bribe journalists, enrich Saca and friends, and fund ARENA political campaigns.  The death of Fernando Llort .   Famed Salvadoran artist Fernando Llort died on August 11 at the age of 69.   Among Llort's most famous works was the mosaic on the facade of the San Salvador cathedral, a work which was later destroyed by church authorities.  Llor...

This article first appeared on the website of InsightCrime  . by Parker Asmann A former president in El Salvador is set to stand trial for allegedly embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars from the state to personal accounts, which could lead to him becoming the first former president of the Central American nation to face a criminal conviction and jail time on such charges. Elías Antonio Saca, who was president of El Salvador from 2004 to 2009, and six other members of his administration, will stand trial for allegedly embezzling $300 million from state coffers into personal accounts, La Prensa Gráfica reported . Saca and his associates were arrested in October 2016 on corruption charges and accused of embezzlement, illicit association and money laundering. According to Factum , Saca passed a law shortly after taking office in 2004 that approved the “internal regulation of the use of public funds.” This allowed him to divert hundreds of millions of dollars from the stat...

El Salvador's attorney general had a victory in a major corruption case to commence 2018.    The private secretary of former president Tony Saca, Élmer Charlaix, was found civilly liable  on Thursday for "illicit enrichment" in the amount of almost 18 million dollars.   During his time handling money for Saca, Charlaix is accused of managing the transfer of hundreds of millions from accounts of the Salvadoran presidency to private accounts of the former president and his associates.  Charlaix and his wife must now repay $18 million under the same law of illicit enrichment under which Saca's successor Mauricio Funes and his son were recently required to return $419,145 to the Salvadoran treasury.   Public officials can be held liable when they cannot explain an increase in wealth which occurred during their time in office.  The misappropriation of funds by Charlaix, Saca and their associates, however, clearly dwarfs the sum for which Fune...

The investigative journalists at El Faro have published a report on a parallel secret set of financial records used by ARENA presidential administrations of Calderon Sol, Flores and Tony Saca.    The records reflect money diverted from the government to many purposes: Between 1994 and 2006, the Presidency of the Republic maintained a register parallel to the official one in order to hide the true use of hundreds of millions of dollars. Two accounting books to which El Faro had access detailed how the last three governments of ARENA utilized 322 million dollars, and more than half of this amount corresponds to checks paid to the order of ex-presidents Armando Calderón Sol, Francisco Flores and Antonio Saca. The El Faro reporting goes on to describe how the various presidents over the course of twelve years hid how they used "discretionary" funds of the presidency.  In additions to payments to the presidents themselves, millions were paid out in bonuses to government of...

More details are being made available regarding the embezzlement and money-laundering case against El Salvador's former president Tony Saca. El Salvador's attorney general announced that Saca and six others were being charged with the diversion of more than $246 million from the public coffers.  The prosecutors uncovered a pattern of money laundering of funds coming out of various public accounts, through various other accounts, cash withdrawals, and other transfers leading, among other places, to accounts of media companies owned by Saca.  The prosecution is being led by the Financial Investigation Unit and the Anti-Impunity Group of the Attorney General's office.  The next hearing in the case is Thursday morning, November 3. Saca denies all of the charges against him.  He continues in custody.   His defense lawyer stated that the ex-president feels fine and has faith in the judicial system. Police also  searched  the  home  of ...

Former president of El Salvador Antonio (Tony) Saca was arrested on corruption charges in the early hours of Sunday morning as he left the celebration of his son's wedding.  Along with Saca, police arrested Julio Rank, Saca's ex-secretary of Comunications,  César Funes, the ex-president of the ANDA water authority, and Elmer Charlaix, Saca's former private secretary, and three other officials involved in managing funds in the office of the president. As Reuters reports ,  Saca joins two other recent Salvadoran presidents with corruption charges: In March, El Salvador's supreme court ordered a civil trial of the former president, as well as his wife, Ana Ligia de Saca, because he could not explain how he acquired $5 million at the end of his term.  Saca, who also had his bank accounts and properties frozen, was expelled from his political party, the conservative Nationalist Republican Party (Arena), in 2009 due to the alleged irregularities.  In ...

It may be getting tougher to get away with corruption in El Salvador.    Investigative journalism by online journalists like those at El Faro and RevistaFactum  are regularly describing corruption.    The Probidad division of El Salvador's Supreme Court has open investigations against at least 9 high public officials including two former presidents.   El Salvador's new attorney general Douglas Meléndez has shown a willingness to pursue cases of corruption involving figures on both sides of the political spectrum.    In twelve years of writing this blog, I don't think the amount of corruption has changed over that time.   But the amount of news coverage and the number of possible prosecutions certainly has increased in the past few years.   That's a good thing. As the most recent example, the online periodical El Faro is one of the periodicals world wide participating in the disclosure of the so-called "Panama Papers."   Th...

Written by Arron Daugherty and originally published on the website of InsightCrime . El Salvador's past three presidents have now been accused of corruption, a possible sign the Supreme Court is ready to take on the nation's highest political office. Former El Salvador President Mauricio Funes (2009-2014) is likely to face three separate investigations into his assets, including a money laundering case, an unnamed source close to the Supreme Court told Diario Latino . Funes is already embroiled in an illicit enrichment case and has had certain assets frozen, including four bank accounts, El Faro reported. Accusations against the former president revolve around his inability to account for millions of dollars in personal income and assets. Funes has maintained his innocence and claimed he is being persecuted by his political rivals. Meanwhile the Supreme Court has informed Funes' predecessor, Elías Antonio Saca (2004-2009), that he must account for over $6 million in pers...

El Salvador's president from 1999-2004 was Francisco Flores.   During his presidency, two killer earthquakes hit El Salvador in early 2001 killing hundreds and leaving thousands homeless.   As the country worked to re-build following those quakes, the government of Taiwan delivered $10 million to Flores, with the purported explanation that it was intended for the victims of the earthquakes.   Flores is now under arrest and being held in jail on corruption charges.   His arrest came after it became clear that the millions did not go to earthquake relief, but until now we did not know where the money had actually gone.  In a story reported on October 2, the journalists at El Faro revealed that most of the $10 million had been doled out in dozens of checks to support the presidential campaign of ARENA candidate Tony Saca: The money went into such efforts as Saca's "Casa por casa" -- "house by house" -- campaign effort, into ARENA rallies and events ...

There are seven weeks left until El Salvador's 2014 presidential elections on February 2.   Although the campaign has been going on since 2012, there is still much to be determined and much could change. The three leading candidates are Norman Quijano, the current mayor of San Salvador and candidate of the right wing ARENA party,  Salvador Sánchez Cerén, the current vice president and candidate of the left wing FMLN, and Tony Saca, former president of El Salvador from the ARENA party but now running on a coalition ticket of right wing parties called "Unidad."  Although there are a few other minor candidates, none of them has a chance of winning or much impact on what happens. My friends at the SHARE Foundation have published short biographies of each candidate on the SHARE blog.  Read about  Norman Quijano ,  Tony Saca , and  Salvador Sanchez Ceren . The most recent polls have started to show some consistent strength for Sánchez Cerén. ...

Last week I described how the Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Court had agreed to hear a legal challenge to the aspirations of Tony Saca to be elected president for a second time.   Over the weekend came the news that the the justices have chosen to let the voters decide and that they will not rule on the case involving Saca.  According to a report in La Pagina , the interim president of the Supreme Court informed the Supreme Electoral Tribunal that the Court would not hear cases filed against Norman Quijano and Salvador Sanchez Ceren, and would only rule on the case involving Tony Saca after the elections. That seems to be a prudent decision.   With Saca trailing in recent polls , the Court may be able to avoid ruling all together and avoid provoking another constitutional conflict.

The Constitutional Chamber of El Salvador's Supreme Court is involving itself in political matters once again.   The court has agreed to hear challenges to former president Tony Saca's candidacy for president in the 2014 elections.   Saca was president between 2004 and 2009 and now is running on the ticket of the Unidad coalition.   The blog from Voices on the Border lays out the legal challenge : The Court is considering three claims – 1) Saca, who was President of El Salvador from 2004-2009, isn’t eligible to run again until 2019; 2) he is guilty of fraud during his presidency; and 3) he has shares in corporations that have state contracts, which is a violation of Article 127 of the Constitution. Read the rest of the blog post to get the details on these claims. This is not the first time the Constitutional Chamber has taken on cases involving El Salvador's election process.   Before the 2012 elections of mayors and legislators, the Chamber lessened politi...

Here is a round-up of a variety of this week's news stories from El Salvador. 1.   Millennium Challenge funds awarded .  The US government approved a second round of direct aid to El Salvador through the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) program.  In its press release  announcing the approval, the MCC stated: Washington, D.C.—At its quarterly meeting today, the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Board of Directors approved a five-year, $277 million compact with El Salvador to improve its competitiveness and productivity in international markets, and was briefed on MCC’s latest efforts in open data and transparency.  “I am very pleased that the Board of Directors took this step in approving the compact with El Salvador,” MCC Chief Executive Officer Daniel W. Yohannes said today. “This compact represents a tremendous opportunity to help reduce poverty in El Salvador by spurring investment and increasing economic growth.”  A thorough analysis conc...

Former Salvadoran president Tony Saca today officially launched his campaign to be re-elected as president in the 2014 elections.   Saying that El Salvador does not have the luxury to have a new president who will learn on the job, the conservative politician seeks to return to the country's top job. He will stand as the presidential candidate for a "unity movement  of three small right wing parties:  GANA, PDC and PCN.    In announcing his candidacy, Saca stated  that if he Salvadorans make him the president again, he planned to "govern with the Bible and the Constitution as guides" and to use his experience to bring solutions to the problems plaguing Salvadorans. After he finished his 5 year term as president in 2009, Saca was expelled from ARENA as a traitor, when he was seen to be behind the departure of several legislators to form the GANA party.   Although there's a year to go, Tony Saca joins Salvador Sanchez Ceren  for the...