Funes granted asylum in Nicaragua (Sept. 7, 2016)

Former Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes was granted asylum in Nicaragua. The refuge request came just a few days after El Salvador's attorney general announced an investigation into five corruption cases against him, reports El Faro. The former president also has also been charged in an illicit enrichment case involving over $300,000. His family was also granted asylum, including two sons also charged with illicit enrichment.

They sought protection saying that their lives were in danger because of their “struggle for democracy, peace, justice and human rights,” reports the New York Times. Funes tweeted that he had evidence that “the extreme right” was planning to attack him, but that the judicial proceedings against him will continue and he will seek to prove his innocence.

But the asylum could discredit the proceedings against him, and specifically Attorney General Douglas Meléndez, Michael Allison, associate professor of political science at University of Scranton told the NYTimes.

Funes was already in Nicaragua at the end of last month, when the attorney general's office carried out a series of surprise raids on the businesses of Miguel Menéndez, better known as "Mecafé," in relation to a scheme of favors and loans to third parties through the state Banco Hipotecario. One of those loans benefited a company that then set up a Spa owned by Funes' partner and mother of his youngest son, according to El Faro.

In August, Funes, who is a prolific social media user, used Twitter to deny that he had requested asylum in Nicaragua, where he said he was for work purposes.

The asylum application was dated Sept. 1, which coincides with an order for the release of Funes' government-funded trips abroad while in office, notes the BBC.

The Woodrow Wilson International Center's Latin America director Cynthia J. Arnson told the NYTimes the move was bad for the regional struggle against impunity, but in keeping with Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega's "authoritarian tendencies."

​Otto - El Faro

News Briefs

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