Former El Salvador minister channeled public funds to prepare his campaign – newspaper

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – El Salvador’s former Security Minister Rogelio Rivas was dismissed for allegedly aspiring to the presidential candidacy of the ruling party in 2024 and moving public funds to finance his eventual campaign, according to a Sunday, April 18, publication by local newspaper El Faro.

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele announced last March 26 the appointment of Gustavo Villatoro as the new head of the Security portfolio, without giving details of the departure of Rivas, who had served in that position since June 2019.

“A report by the State Intelligence Agency (OIE) that ensures that Rivas was building a plan to be a presidential candidate and used public resources was the main argument behind the decision to remove him from office,” El Faro states in its report.

It adds that, according to the OIE report, Rivas “was building a political plan” to “become the presidential candidate of the New Ideas (NI) party for the 2024 elections”, without the approval of the president or his family circle.

NI, founded by a movement of Bukele and directed by a cousin of the president, burst into Salvadoran political life in the elections of last February 28 and became the most voted party.

Together with the Great Alliance for National Unity (GANA), this political formation will add 61 of the 84 deputies in the Legislative Assembly that will take office next May 1st.

The publication of El Faro indicates that the Presidential House received last January 11 the referred report, in which it was warned that “a situation has been developing which, when exposed to public knowledge, may have a serious impact on the government of President Bukele, not only due to the use and destination of public funds.”

It adds that the 19-page document indicates creating an account with funds from the Ministry of Security called “Conformación del Fondo Presidencial” (Conformation of the Presidential Fund). This would serve to “finance his eventual campaign.”

“He has designed a mechanism to capture resources” and “the confirmation of the said fund would be used in his campaign as a candidate for the presidency by NI since he assumes himself as the ideal candidate to be designated by the party for such position,” reads the report, according to the investigative media.

El Faro assures that it “obtained a copy of that report on March 9, 2021, two weeks before Rivas was dismissed” and that it “confirmed that the report coincides with other documents obtained later.”

Also, El Faro claims that it “separately interviewed three high-level sources with access to information from Casa Presidencial” and that their testimonies “confirm and complement each other in details about the dismissal.”

The document cited by El Faro states that “the funds that reached the account for an eventual campaign of Rivas came mainly from government funds destined for the construction of infrastructure and from procurement processes carried out during the pandemic.”

El Faro notes that it “documented the existence of this account” through the Ministry of Finance, given that in 2020 an audit was carried out, which had as one of its findings the aforementioned account.

The Salvadoran president has not commented on the publication of El Faro in his social networks.

“I want to thank the President @NayibBukele for the road traveled and the trust he placed in me during the time I served as Minister of Justice and Public Security,” Rivas posted on Twitter the day the change in the head of the Ministry of Security was announced.

During his time at the helm of the Security Ministry, the country recorded a significant reduction in homicide figures through, according to the government, the implementation of the Territorial Control Plan, details of which are not known.