Exclusive-Former Salvadoran prosecutor says government has suspended investigation into pact with groups.

Author: Sarah Kinosian

SAN SALBADOR (Reuters) – A former anti-corruption prosecutor in El Salvador has said that President Nayib Bukele’s government has closed its unit’s investigation into talks with violent street gangs to help spread power as the United States is stepping up pressure on the Central American country. on these conversations.

German Arriaza, who heads an anti-corruption unit at the Attorney General’s Office, said his team had reached an agreement with the Bukele government in 2019 with Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 to gather documentary and photographic evidence to reduce murder rates and the New Government Ideas party helped win the legislative election in February.

Arriaza’s comments are the first time a former Salvadoran official has publicly accused the Bukele government of reaching an agreement with gangs, which have plagued the country with brutal killings and extortion for at least two decades. The end of Arriaza’s research and his flight abroad have not been announced before.

On December 8, the U.S. Treasury Department also claimed that talks had been held and that sanctions had been imposed on two Salvadoran government officials, saying they were targeted as part of similar actions to complete a democracy summit organized by President Joe Biden.

The United States is stepping up pressure on the Bukele administration because of Washington’s anti-democratic practices, such as the destruction of the judiciary. A U.S. Justice Department task force dealing with M-13 crime in the United States is preparing charges against two Salvadoran officials for their alleged role in the negotiations, two sources told Reuters.

The government removed Arriaza from office in May 2021, according to a transfer note from Reuters, after a clean-up of Bukele’s allied lawmakers to replace the five loyal constitutional judges and the country’s top prosecutor who had been replaced by government loyalists.

Arriaza, a source in the Attorney General’s Office in El Salvador, and two U.S. justice officials say the investigation was completed. Fearing revenge by the Salvadoran government for launching the investigation, Arriaza said he went into exile immediately and that members of his group, known as the Special Anti-Mafia Group (GEA), had gone into exile or had been displaced.

“It was our investigation that led the government to disband the anti-corruption organization,” Arriaza said from a location outside El Salvador, urging Reuters not to do so.

Bukele’s press office and the Attorney General’s Office did not respond to requests for comment on Arriaza’s work and the fate of his investigation. The president has often denied media reports and opposition allegations that he negotiated a truce with the gangs.

Arriaza’s unit reported on an investigation in 2020 based on hearings, security cameras, photographs, seized documents and hard drives, which he said included Deputy Justice Minister Osiris Luna and another official Carlos Marroquin entering the prisons to negotiate. secret truce with gangs.

Similar allegations have been made by the Treasury Department.

Arriaza said his unit found that Luna and Marroquin, heads of a government welfare agency, offered groups better prison conditions, money and other benefits by reducing homicide rates and supporting Bukele’s party in support of the February general election.

Reuters obtained a 129-page excerpt from the report that was independent of Arriaza. U.S. officials confirmed in a statement that the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro reported in August that it was genuine.

Luna and Marroquin did not respond to repeated requests for comment, and Reuters was unable to find a legal representative.

US sanctions on the couple have heightened tensions between El Salvador and Washington as they see Bukele becoming increasingly authoritarian.

Many MS-13 members have been convicted of murder and drug trafficking in U.S. cities, and several gang leaders have been charged with terrorism in New York’s Eastern District. U.S. officials say groups have ordered killings inside the U.S. prison in El Salvador.

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Arriaza said he was under pressure in May after Bukele’s party won the election, replaced the chief prosecutor and removed the high judge.

On May 5, he was called to a meeting with new Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado, and his unit asked him what case he was doing against the government.

A few hours after Delgado set out his investigation, including an investigation into negotiations with the group, Arriaza received a written notice from Reuters that he would be taken to a prosecutor’s school in El Salvador as a consultant.

Delgado could not be reached for comment.

Arriaza said he was banned from accessing his office, computer and files after the May 5 meeting and fled the country on the same day to live abroad. He said he feared compensation from the Salvadoran government for his group’s investigations.

“I have been a government prosecutor for over 18 years. I have prosecuted corruption cases across the political spectrum (politicians, judges, police, gang members, drug dealers), but this is the first time I have felt the need to leave.”

Bukele – one of Latin America’s most well-known leaders – has sued members of previous governments for negotiating with groups for their political support.

Rumors of a truce between the Bukele government and the gang began when the murder rate dropped by about 50% in June 2019 and the following year. Bukel blamed the fall in homicides on his policies.

The report, obtained by Reuters, includes transcripts of alleged audio messages from prosecutors from gang members’ phones, handwritten requests from gangs, and entries in the logbook that determine who the inmates were associated with. It also describes the alleged attempts to destroy the evidence of meetings held in prison by Luna.

It includes images from the security camera, which allegedly saw Luna repeatedly entering the prison with the help of people who were hiding their faces with ski masks. Investigators identified one of these disguised people as a Moroccan in the presentation.

The group’s report details investigations into the misappropriation of prison funds and illegal pandemic spending in various government ministries.