Ex-El Salvador president sentenced in absentia to 14 years

May 30 (UPI) -- Mauricio Funes, the disgraced former president of El Salvador, has been sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison for his ties to criminal organizations and breach of duties.

The sentence was handed down by a San Salvador court on Monday, with his former justice minister, David Munguia Payes, receiving an 18-year sentence, the Office of Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado said in a statement.

"We were able to verify that these two former officials, who had the obligation to protect Salvadorans, traded their lives in exchange for electoral favors, acting as gang members," Delgado tweeted.

Funes, 64, served as president from 2009 to 2014. Prosecutors accused him and his justice minister of securing an agreement with rival gangs that permitted the criminal organizations to grow economically and territorially in exchange for reducing the homicide rate between 2011 and 2013 to benefit the Funes administration in upcoming elections.

The attorney general's office said Funes received eight years for connections to illicit organizations and six for breach of duties, while Munguia Payes received the same sentence plus four years for arbitrary acts.

The prosecution had asked the court to hand down a 16-year sentence for Funes, who remains at large, and a 20-year sentence for Munguia Payes, who was arrested in 2020.

The former president was prosecuted and sentenced in absentia as he lives in Nicaragua where he and his family were granted asylum in 2016. He was granted citizenship in the country in 2019.

"An unjust conviction without evidence," Funes said Monday on his social media accounts following the announcement of his and his former justice minister's convictions. "The [attorney general of the Republic of El Salvador] did not submit any evidence that the benefits allegedly received by the gangsters were authorized by the presidency.

"A conviction without strong evidence is synonymous with political persecution."