Caribbean & Central America - March 2016 (ISSN 1741-4458)

No head of state has gone on trial for corruption in El Salvador’s history, but all of a sudden the three immediate predecessors of President Salvador Sánchez Cerén have all been accused of embezzlement and illicit enrichment. Francisco Flores (1999-2004) died of a brain haemorrhage before he could stand trial for allegedly embezzling US$15m of Taiwanese donations. Cynics suspected this would mark the end for corruption cases involving heads of state in El Salvador but the supreme court of justice (CSJ) has since moved against Antonio Saca (2004-2009) and Mauricio Funes (2009-2014).

There is some speculation in the local press that the CSJ’s sudden thirst for pursuing former presidents owes not to the discovery of an independent streak but rather is in the interests of self-preservation. By showing it can prosecute former presidents for wrongdoing, the CSJ could argue that it has made a strong case for why El Salvador does not need an external body along the lines of the International Commission Against Impunity (Cicig) in Guatemala or indeed the Mission to Support the Fight against Corruption and Impunity in Honduras (Maccih).

The civil chamber in San Salvador officially began a case against Funes, as well as one of his sons Diego, in mid-February after the CSJ instructed it to investigate the origin of US$700,000 of unexplained personal income in Funes’ name (the majority of which [US$520,000] was accumulated during his term in office). It was a bitter irony not lost on Funes that it was he who launched the corruption investigation into Flores. Funes alleged that the legal action against him was the result of “a clear political vendetta by certain magistrates on the CSJ because of corruption accusations which as president I promoted against former administrations”.

Funes and Saca

Although Funes was elected on the ticket of the ruling left-wing Frente Farabundo Martí para la Liberación (FMLN), he was not a member and had strained relations with the party hierarchy so it will not shed any tears over his prosecution. The same applies for the right-wing opposition Alianza Republicana Nacionalista (Arena) which had a dramatic parting of the ways with Saca, an independent who won the presidency on the party ticket.

The CSJ ordered that Saca be investigated for US$2.9m in savings that he failed to disclose to the finance ministry between 2004 and 2014, although he stands accused of illicit enrichment of up to US$5m. The CSJ did not make clear whether its investigation of Saca would extend to the financial benefits his campaign received in 2004 from the Taiwanese donations which Flores was accused of embezzling and passing onto Arena. This angle of investigation would be far less popular with Arena as a number of senior party figureheads could well be found to be complicit in wrongdoing.

The CSJ has frozen Funes’ assets, including four personal bank accounts. It also froze five of Saca’s bank accounts in early March. There have been allegations against Saca ever since the whistleblowing website Wikileaks published a telegram from the US embassy in El Salvador in October 2009 which argued that “while the Salvadoran public may be inured to self-serving behavior by politicians, many in Arena believe that the brazen manner in which Saca and his people are widely perceived to have used their positions for personal enrichment went beyond the pale” (see sidebar).

• Saca

The Wikileaks wire went on to argue that the Saca administration “pushed laws and selectively enforced regulations with the specific intent to benefit Saca family business interests. Saca also accumulated conspicuous assets – including a mansion in San Salvador and large landholdings in La Union that do not square with the investments and income he had prior to assuming the presidency”.