A Salvadoran court ordered on Thursday that properties seized from former Defense Minister David Munguía, who is in prison for a truce with gangs, be handed over to the State, as they were obtained illegally with public funds. “The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) has managed to have six properties (residences) and $169,000 linked to David Munguía and his family group handed over to the State,” the prosecutor’s office stated on its account on the social network X. The decision was made by a Specialized Court of Domain Extinction in the capital.
Six residences, valued at $4.3 million and whose ownership was “extinguished” from the former minister, are located in different areas in the departments of San Salvador and La Libertad. Munguía acquired the assets “using State funds” in the period 2009-2019, when he served as head of the Ministries of Defense and later of Justice and Public Security, the prosecutor’s office indicated.
In May 2023, Munguía was sentenced to 18 years in prison for having facilitated a truce with gangs during his tenure as minister. On the same occasion, former President Mauricio Funes (2009-2014) was sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison, also for having facilitated the truce with gangs during his term.
At that time, the prosecutor’s office pointed out that Funes and Munguía “allowed” the gangs to strengthen themselves economically and territorially, in exchange for reducing the homicide rate between 2011 and 2013, to benefit their government. The gang truce took place during several months in 2012.
Funes, who faces other proceedings before the Salvadoran justice system for alleged acts of corruption, left in mid-2016 for Nicaragua, where he received asylum. Subsequently, in July 2019, the government of Daniel Ortega granted him Nicaraguan nationality.
A court in the capital is pending to issue a sentence in a case where former President Funes is accused by the prosecutor’s office of the crime of special cases of money laundering. According to the prosecutor’s office, the former president would have received a small plane as a “gift” for granting a construction contract for a bridge to a Guatemalan company between 2012 and 2014. In the case, the prosecutor’s office has asked the court to impose a 12-year prison sentence on Funes.
