Former El Salvador President Mauricio Funes dies in exile in Nicaragua at age 65

SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador — Former El Salvador President Mauricio Funes, who spent the final years of his life in Nicaragua to avoid various criminal sentences, died late Tuesday. He was 65.

Nicaragua's Health Ministry said in a statement that Funes had died of a serious chronic illness.

Funes governed El Salvador from 2009 to 2014. He lived his final nine years under the protection of Nicaragua President Daniel Ortega, whose government had given him citizenship, allowing him to avoid extradition.

Nicaragua's Foreign Affairs Ministry said that Funes' family had decided he would be buried in Nicaragua.

The former president had pending sentences in El Salvador for corruption and making deals with the country's powerful street gangs that amounted to 28 years, but he never set foot in prison.

The journalist-turned-politician came to power with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, the leftist party born of El Salvador's civil war and a powerful national political force for three decades that was left with no seats in the Congress after last year's election.

On Wednesday, his party said in a statement that ''Mauricio Funes as an investigative journalist and incisive generator of public opinion, as well as in his time as president of the republic, enjoyed broad acceptance and support from the Salvadoran people and the international community.''

Current Labor Minister Rolando Castro said via X that Funes' ''skills and contributions to the country as a journalist are undeniable, just as are his mistakes in public office.''

Funes was born in San Salvador on Oct. 18, 1959. He worked as a teacher in Catholic schools, but later made his name as a war reporter and hosted a highly popular interview show that took on controversial topics. He interviewed multiple heads of state, worked at two television stations and was a correspondent for CNN from 1991 to 2007, winning multiple awards.

Then the FMLN came calling, offering to make him their candidate and he won the 2009 elections, defeating Rodrigo Ávila of the conservative National Republican Alliance, better known as Arena, that had governed the country since 1989.

Funes was a fresh face, not someone directly involved in the civil war as the party tried to remake itself with a less bellicose image.

At the time, Cardinal Gregorio Rosa Chávez praised Funes as ''tenacious'' and someone who wouldn't shy away from El Salvador's problems.

But by the time he left office, Funes was hounded by accusations of corruption. In 2016, he fled to Nicaragua. He always denied the accusations and said his troubles were all part of political persecution.

But he was tried in absentia six times and convicted in each one.

For one, Funes was sentenced in May 2023 to 14 years in prison for negotiating a truce with the gangs to lower the homicide rate during his administration in exchange for giving imprisoned gang leaders perks.

His last sentence came just last year in June. He was sentenced to eight years in prison for receiving an airplane as a kickback for awarding a construction contract for a bridge project. He was also being prosecuted for allegedly diverting some $351 million in government funds.

A number of former officials in his administration, as well as his ex-wife Vanda Pignato, his children and various former partners have also been prosecuted for corruption. His former security minister, David Munguía Payés, was sentenced to 18 years in prison for his role in negotiating the gang truce.

Despite Funes' troubled presidency, the FMLN won again with President Salvador Sánchez Cerén who governed from 2014 to 2019. Sánchez Céren had been one of the five guerrilla commanders in the civil war.

In recent years, Funes and current El Salvador President Nayib Bukele frequently sparred on social platforms, trading insults. Bukele pushed prosecutions of the former president, especially for his negotiations with the gangs.

Bukele himself had been accused of negotiating with gang leaders, but vehemently denied that and later crushed the gangs in a yearslong all-out offensive.