Lawyer says Salvadoran gov’t quashed probe of gang pact: Reuters

A former senior Salvadoran anti-corruption prosecutor said President Nayib Bukele’s government shut down his unit’s investigation into its alleged negotiations with violent street gangs to help expand its power, as the United States steps up pressure on the Central American country over those talks. German Arriaza, who headed an anti-corruption unit within the Attorney General’s Office, said his team compiled documentary and photographic evidence that Bukele’s government struck a deal with the Mara Salvatrucha and Barrio 18 gangs in 2019 to reduce murder rates and help the ruling New Ideas party win legislative elections in February. Arriaza said his unit found that Luna and Marroquin, the head of a government social welfare agency, offered gangs better prison conditions, money and other benefits in exchange for them reducing homicide rates and giving electoral support to Bukele’s party at legislative elections this February. The report obtained by Reuters laid out transcripts from prosecutors of alleged audio messages from gang members’ phones, handwritten demands allegedly from the gangs, logbook entries detailing which prisoners government officials allegedly met.