Caribbean & Central America - December 2015 (ISSN 1741-4458)

El Salvador’s national police (PNC) have arrested eight members of an alleged judicial corruption ring. The criminal network, which is thought to include rogue members of the police as well as corrupt members of the judiciary, is accused of accepting bribes in return for absolving senior figures in mara street gangs as well as drug-traffickers charged with serious crimes. A further five arrest warrants have been issued.

El Salvador’s attorney general’s office (FGR) began the investigation into the criminal network in 2014 after various telephone intercepts of mara gangs detected communications established with lawyers and judges. The majority of the 13 people charged by the FGR were accused of manipulating legal rulings in specific cases in return for ‘private economic benefits’, including former judges in the department of San Miguel, Enrique Beltrán Beltrán and Jorge González Guzmán; a former prosecutor for the financial investigation unit (UIF), Arturo Magaña Figueroa; and members of defence counsels. They stand accused of perversion of the course of justice, bribery and falsifying documents.

Cleaning up the judiciary is a fundamental component of the overarching security initiative ‘Plan El Salvador Seguro’, launched by the government led by President Salvador Sánchez Cerén, to try to address the country’s deteriorating public security situation. Sánchez Cerén received fulsome support for his government’s unprecedented efforts to improve public security through ‘Plan El Salvador Seguro’ from the executive director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Yury Fedotov, after he visited the country on 16 November.

“Over the last 20 years, successive Salvadoran governments have worked tirelessly to combat organized crime. I note that El Salvador has called for the UN’s support in these efforts. As the head of the Office on Drugs and Crime, I want President Cerén to know that I have heard that call, and we stand ready to provide every possible assistance,” Fedotov said. The Sánchez Cerén administration announced that it would sign a cooperation accord with the UNODC imminently.

• Guatemala ties

President Salvador Sánchez Cerén hosted a meeting with Guatemala’s president-elect Jimmy Morales on 23 November, ahead of the latter’s inauguration on 14 January. The two men discussed “security [including the creation of a high-level bilateral security group], a customs unio, and facilitating trade, free movement of goods and people,” according to El Salvador’s foreign minister, Hugo Martínez, who also attended the meeting.