(Reuters) -Former Salvadoran president, Mauricio Funes, died late on Tuesday in Nicaragua, the place the leftist chief had been residing since 2016 to keep away from corruption costs in his dwelling nation. He was 65.
Nicaraguan authorities confirmed the demise of Funes, who was president of El Salvador from 2009 to 2014, in an announcement on the federal government’s official web site.
Funes died from a “serious chronic illness,” the assertion mentioned, with out offering additional particulars.
He fled El Salvador for Nicaragua almost a decade in the past, after Salvadoran prosecutors started a legal investigation into alleged corruption costs, which resulted in 5 arrest warrants towards him.
Funes was born in San Salvador in October 1959. He taught in Catholic colleges after graduating from the Jesuit College of Central America (UCA) with a level in literature, earlier than gaining notoriety as an award-winning journalist.
He started as a warfare reporter and was a correspondent for CNN, however he was greatest recognized for in-depth interviews with politicians and exposing corruption on his standard interview present.
After 20 years of journalism, Funes retired to run within the 2009 presidential race for the previous leftist Farabundo Marti Nationwide Liberation Entrance (FMLN), which shaped through the nation’s 1979-1992 civil warfare.
The FMLN was a cornerstone of Salvadoran politics for many years earlier than President Nayib Bukele’s New Concepts occasion disrupted the nation’s two-party system and took management of all branches of presidency.
Throughout Funes’ five-year time period he developed completely different social, instructional and well being packages however his administration was marred by a gang pact he negotiated, by which his administration gave gang leaders advantages in alternate for a drop in homicides.
By the tip of his time period in 2014, Funes confronted a number of authorized proceedings for allegedly embezzling hundreds of thousands, receiving kickbacks, cash laundering, paying bribes, tax evasion and disclosing confidential paperwork.
He known as the costs political persecution from the Salvadoran proper and in 2016 fled to Nicaragua along with his household. Funes was granted Nicaraguan nationality, shielding him from extradition.
In Could 2023 Bukele’s administration, itself accused of creating offers with gangs just like the MS-13, sentenced him to 14 years in jail in absentia for the gang pact.
Funes would usually spar on social media with Bukele.
In 2014 the FMLN, led by President Salvador Sanchez Ceren, remained in energy. However in 2019 the populist, authoritarian-leaning Bukele received a landslide election victory, in what was largely seen as a powerful rejection of the FMLN. In final yr’s congressional elections, the FMLN didn’t win a single seat.
Sanchez Ceren can also be presently in exile in Nicaragua.