SAN SALVADOR (AP) – The Public Ministry of El Salvador asked on Monday to exonerate former president Tony Saca and two leaders of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (Arena) party who are being processed for the diversion of ten million dollars donated by the government of Taiwan to help the victims of the 2001 earthquakes.
In March 2019, the Prosecutor’s Office charged former presidents Francisco Flores (1999-2004) and Saca (2004-200), as well as the leaders of the Arena party – Juan Tennant Weight, Gerardo Balzaretti and Mauricio Samayoa – for the crime of money and asset laundering. Flores and Samayoa have already died, so it was declared that the process against them had already ended due to their death.
Prosecutors in the case said that they had asked a court for the definitive dismissal for Saca, Tennant Weight and Balzaretti due to a sentence of the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice in June 2020 “by virtue of having prescribed the action.” They explained that the events occurred in 2003-2004 and that the three implicated were being prosecuted under the Criminal Code in force in 1998, whose maximum statute of limitations was 10 years. In the current Penal Code it is 15 years.
For his part, the Attorney General of the Republic (FGR), Rodolfo Delgado, clarified in a tweet that they are not asking for the ex-president’s 10-year sentence to be forgiven and that it was imposed for the diversion of more than 300 million public funds . “Saca is serving a sentence for money laundering on October 27, 2026. And he will serve his sentence until the last day. The FGR is not requesting the release of a convicted person for acts related to corruption ”, he stated.
Despite the above, it was stated that they will continue to try to recover the ten million dollars, since the civil liability has not prescribed.
The final dismissal is equivalent to an acquittal and produces res judicata effects, that is, it closes the process.
The Second Investigating Court suspended the hearing at the insistence of Balzaretti and his defender and rescheduled it for next Wednesday.
An investigative court that investigated the diversion of more than 15 million dollars donated by Taiwan determined during the investigations against former President Flores that ten of these went to the accounts of the Arena party, which led Flores and Saca to the presidency and the rest remained in the hands of the deceased president. According to the investigations, ten million dollars of donations from Taiwan were deposited in a Costa Rican bank in the name of a legal entity called the José Antonio Rodriguez Porth Political Studies Centers of the Arena party and were later withdrawn within a period of six months. The account was closed in April 2004.
Former President Saca is serving a ten-year sentence in the La Esperanza prison, in San Salvador, for the diversion of more than 300 million dollars from the state coffers to favor his companies and third parties. In September 2018, the former president requested an abbreviated process and after confessing his crimes, a court sentenced him for embezzlement, money laundering and assets.
Saca is the third Salvadoran ex-president to be prosecuted for illicit enrichment or for diversion of public resources during his mandate. The others are Francisco Flores, who died of a stroke while in family roots, and Mauricio Funes (2009-2014), who is asylum in Nicaragua.