El Salvador’s ex-president Saca confesses irregular payments to officials

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Saca, who was sentenced to 10 years in prison in 2018 after confessing in court to embezzling over US$300 million, testified before a pro-government majority committee investigating these secret payments.

“I handed it over believing that this was legal because this is how it had been done by all administrations,” Saca said, while not detailing if he handed over this type of payment to himself.

The ex-president, who was also convicted of bribery, said that this practice was considered “compensatory payments” and that the funds came from a reserved or secret expenses budget line.

Among the beneficiaries of these irregular payments, widely denounced in journalistic investigations, was Saca’s former vice-president Ana Vilma de Escobar with US$10,000 per month.

These payments, not included in the salaries and undeclared to the Treasury, occurred during the 5 years of Saca’s administration, who governed under the banner of the Nationalist Republican Alliance (ARENA, right-wing), which ousted him.

He also confessed that he gave money as “institutional support” to former prosecutors Belisario Artiga and Félix Garrid Safie, to magistrates of the Constitutional Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice (CJS) during his term, and to general secretaries of two political parties.

They are Rodolfo Parker of the Partido Demócrata Cristiano (PDC), and Ciro Cruz Zepeda of the Partido de Concertación Nacional (PDC). Both parties are currently allies of the ruling party Nuevas Ideas (NI) in the Legislative Assembly.

Saca also mentioned current ARENA deputies Margarita de Escobar, former vice-chancellor, and Rodrigo Ávila, former candidate to succeed Saca in the presidency in 2009 and former director of the National Civil Police (PNC).

The convicted ex-president stated that the handing over of money as bonuses “has been a practice of several governments” and that this had been explained to him by the late Francisco Flores (1999-2004), also from ARENA.

According to Saca, the disclosure of the list of names of people receiving bonuses and the irregular practice was not part of his confession under orders from the Prosecutor’s Office, the institution with which he agreed to confess to the crimes of embezzlement and money laundering to evade a heavy sentence.

He accused former Prosecutor General Douglas Meléndez, who brought proceedings against him, of pressuring him to keep this information from being disclosed.

Saca said that in 2009 he also told ex-president Mauricio Funes (2009-2014) about this practice and said he could not confirm if it occurred in the governments prior to Flores.

Alfredo Cristiani (1989-1994), also an ARENA ex-president, on Wednesday testified before the committee that during his administration he did not authorize illegal practices with state funds, neither accepting nor denying the handing over of bonuses.

Both ex-presidents were summoned by the committee established by the Legislative Assembly to conduct a non-binding criminal investigation on the alleged delivery of secret payments to government officials since 1989.