Mauricio Funes obit

Ex-Salvadoran Leader Mauricio Funes Dies In Nicaragua

 

He was not on the list.

El Salvador's first leftist president, Mauricio Funes, died Tuesday aged 65 in Nicaragua, where he fled in 2016 after being accused of corruption in his country, the Nicaraguan government said.

Funes, who led El Salvador from 2009 to 2014, died at 9:35 pm (0335 GMT) "as a result of a serious chronic ailment," Nicaragua's health ministry said in a statement published in state media, without specifying the cause of death.

Hours before announcing his death, the ministry said the former president's condition had been "aggravated by chronic ailments that have afflicted him."

Accused of embezzling $351 million from state coffers, among other corruption charges during his administration, Funes fled to Nicaragua in 2016 where he was granted asylum.

Three years later, President Daniel Ortega's government granted him Nicaraguan nationality.

Funes, who had argued that he was the victim of political persecution, had five criminal proceedings pending before the Salvadoran courts, including embezzlement.

In May 2023, he was sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison for alleged secret negotiations held during his presidency with criminal gangs terrorizing the Central American nation.

In June last year, he was also sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for money laundering, after being found guilty of favoring a Guatemalan company so that it would be awarded a bridge construction contract.

In exchange, Funes "received a light aircraft as a gift," the attorney general's office said at the time.

The United States had blacklisted Funes, making him ineligible for a US visa, after the State Department accused him of schemes that resulted in "pilfering hundreds of millions of dollars from state coffers."