The Foundation for Due Process (DPLF) suggested on Monday that the international community “has to accompany” El Salvador in its “fight” against corruption, a phenomenon that “different governments embrace and promise to combat, but history shows that these commitments are not serious, nor sincere.
A study entitled “Confronting the barriers to investigate corruption in El Salvador” and released virtually, points out that “corruption is a structural phenomenon in El Salvador, which has managed to reach the highest spheres of public management in governments of different political orientation.
He points out that “the fight against this phenomenon has experienced recent significant setbacks.”
The report, according to the non-governmental organization, documents how legislative reforms and government decisions “make it difficult, and even directly prevent, access to the public information necessary to detect acts of corruption, as well as the possibility of reporting and punishing them.” .
“The international community has to accompany El Salvador to resume the path of the fight against corruption and support public policies of transparency, integrity and accountability of public institutions, in addition to supporting civil society and investigative journalism that denounce acts of corruption,” he emphasizes.
DPLF is an organization dedicated to strengthening the rule of law and promoting respect for human rights in Latin America.
The entity points out that “those who investigate corruption in El Salvador face various obstacles to access information that allows them to point out, denounce and sanction it.”
“Different governments embrace the banner of the fight against corruption and promise to fight it, but history shows that these commitments are not serious or sincere if they are not accompanied by concrete actions, even if this implies separating current officials and affecting groups close to the environment. of power,” said Úrsula Indacochea, director of the DPLF’s Judicial Independence program.
President Nayib Bukele recently announced that his government will carry out a “frontal war” against corruption and noted that a prison will be built for “the corrupt.”
For lawyer Ruth López, head of the Anti-Corruption and Justice area of the Cristosal organization, corruption “has always been part of an electoral campaign strategy” in El Salvador and President Bukele’s announcement to combat it responds to “political interest”. .
“The announcement fits perfectly into this framework of government propaganda at the time, where (the president) also needs to reverse the criticism that exists at the internal and international level about violations of human rights,” López told reporters.
The Bukele Government and the Organization of American States (OAS) launched at the beginning of September 2019 the International Commission Against Impunity (Cicies) that would be in charge of carrying out administrative investigations in cases of corruption in the 105 State entities, but the agreement it was finished in June 2021 by the government.
The Cicies notified the Prosecutor’s Office of 12 cases of “possible illicit corruption in five State portfolios.”
These notices gave rise in November 2020 to a series of raids at different levels of the Government as part of the investigations into the alleged irregular use of funds earmarked for pandemic care.
Prosecutor Rodolfo Delgado has suspended all types of investigation into allegations of corruption by officials of the Bukele Administration.