El Salvador leader accused of collusion with gangs

‘Gang leadership also agreed to support Bukele’s Nuevas Ideas party’

EL SALVADOR’S president, Nayib Bukele, has been accused of falsely claiming to crack down on some of the world’s most violent street gangs while his government secretly gave them backhanders, including “mobile phones and prostitutes” for jailed gang leaders.

The accusation comes from the United States Treasury, which this week sanctioned two of Mr Bukele’s key allies for agreeing a “secret truce” with the Mara Salvatrucha (MS-13) and Barrio 18 gangs, whose rampant bloodshed has brought the Central American nation to its knees.

It activated the Magnitsky Act, used to target foreign officials involved in corruption and human rights abuses, against Osiris Luna, head of El Salvador’s prison system and deputy minister for public security, and Carlos Marroquin, who leads a welfare agency.

That means any assets the pair have in the US will be frozen and US citizens will be barred from doing business with them. Luna was also accused of stealing government Covid-19 supplies.

Washington accused the pair of striking the clandestine deal with the criminals, in meetings in El Salvador’s high security jails, to ensure that “gang violence and confirmed homicides remained low. Over the course of these negotiations with Luna and Marroquin, gang leadership also agreed to provide political support to the Nuevas Ideas political party [of Bukele] in upcoming elections”. It comes as aides to Leftist former president Mauricio Funes are being tried for a similar pact with the gangs in 2012. Mr Bukele has tweeted that those functionaries are “worse than [trash]” and had “negotiated with the blood of our people”.

“This is very serious,” said José Miguel Cruz, at Florida International University. “The US is saying that the Bukele administration colluded with one of the most violent criminal organisations in the Western hemisphere.”