El Salvador terminates its anti-corruption and impunity commission

The collaboration hardly lasted two years. New Salvadoran Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado has announced Friday, June 4 that he was going to end the cooperation agreement signed with the Organization of American States (OAS), which supported the Salvadoran judicial system through the Commission for the fight against corruption and impunity (Cicies). Appointed Attorney General in May 2021 by Congress, Mr. Delgado suggested that this choice was dictated by the appointment of the former mayor of San Salvador, Ernesto Muyshondt, as advisor to the OAS.

“We are open to the idea of ​​working with the international community and receiving support in the fight against impunity, but it is impossible for us to receive this kind of support from an organization that is now receiving the advice of a criminal “, said Delgado, who assured that he would ask the foreign ministries to cancel the agreement and that the cooperation would end in the next thirty days.

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Last commission of its kind in the northern triangle

Ernesto Muyshondt is currently being prosecuted for alleged crimes related to electoral fraud and an illegal association for allegedly negotiating payments to the country’s powerful street gangs in return for their electoral support in 2014. He had not been re-elected in February 2021.

For the former mayor, the decision is purely political and, according to him, it is only a question of using it “As an excuse not to fight corruption, when the Cicies made discoveries about the corruption of several regime officials during the pandemic. Sad role that of a prosecutor who is only a puppet of the government ”.

The US Embassy in El Salvador said regret this decision, considering that “The fight against corruption is essential and fundamental” and that she was going “Continue to look for ways to reduce and combat corruption and impunity”. The Cicies was the only commission to fight against corruption and impunity that persisted in this region of Central America, after the elimination of the Cicig in Guatemala and the Maccih in Honduras.

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The World with AP