SAN SALVADOR – A court of justice in El Salvador on Wednesday sentenced former Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes to eight years in prison for money laundering, for allegedly bidding for a bridge in favor of a Guatemalan company in exchange for receiving a plane. The former president, asylum in Nicaragua, He has seven criminal proceedings against him and two of them with a conviction.
“It was proven that Funes favored a Guatemalan company in order to be awarded the contract to build the San Isidro bridge over the Lempa River,” the prosecutor’s office said in a statement regarding the third sentence against the former Salvadoran president, who lives in Nicaragua under the protection of the Daniel Ortega regime.
The case heard in a court in San Salvador began in December 2020 when the Public Ministry presented a new accusation and arrest warrant against Funes. A year earlier, Nicaraguan dictator Daniel Ortega granted him nationality to prevent him from being extradited.
Funes, who governed El Salvador from 2009 to 2014, lives in Nicaragua under Ortega’s protection and has not been present at any of the trials against him.
“Criminal process”
In one, convicted of negotiating with gangs during his term, he was sentenced to 14 years in prison; In another for illicit enrichment, he was sentenced to repay more than $400,000.
According to the tax accusation, the former president handed over the design and construction project of a bridge in 2013 to a Guatemalan company for 8.4 million dollars. In exchange, Funes allegedly received a King Air TG ADL model airplane for the use of himself and a businessman, in which they traveled with his families to the United States, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras and Guatemala.
The former president did not appoint a defense lawyer, so one was assigned to him ex officio.
For this criminal process, businessman José Miguel Menéndez — known as “Mecafé” — was sentenced to eight years in prison in August 2022. The court found evidence that he made 47 trips with the aircraft in question between June 27, 2013. and September 13, 2016.
After this conviction of Menéndez, a criminal reform was approved on September 21, 2022 that allows trials to be held with absent defendants, so Funes was able to face the criminal trial without being present.
Arrest warrants
In 2020, the Public Prosecutor’s Office also issued arrest warrants against the Salvadoran businessman and another Guatemalan, Jaime Ramón Aparicio Mejía, the latter accused of bribery.
During the trial, the Guatemalan businessman confirmed that he delivered the plane to Funes before the award.
In addition to this case, Funes has faced six other criminal proceedings. A court in El Salvador sentenced him in May 2023 to 14 years in prison for negotiating a truce with the gangs during his term to lower the homicide rate in exchange for offering benefits to his leaders in the prisons.
Funes, who became president of El Salvador nominated by the leftist Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front (FMLN), is also being prosecuted for the diversion of $351 million from the presidential allocation of reserved expenses.
The former president is also facing charges for the payment of 108.5 million dollars to a company for the construction of a hydroelectric dam, for the disclosure of a report on suspicious operations that revealed the diversion of 10 million dollars donated by Taiwan, and for bribes to former Attorney General Luis Martínez.
Source: AP
