Ex-wife of former President Funes sentenced in El Salvador

A Salvadoran court of justice sentenced Regina Cañas, ex-wife of former President Mauricio Funes, to three years in prison for the crime of covering up in a judicial process against the ex-president and their son, Diego Roberto Funes Cañas.

Cañas, who was a fugitive from justice, agreed with the Attorney General’s Office (FGR) to submit to an abbreviated procedure, accepting the responsibility of concealment and the Seventh Investigating Court of San Salvador sentenced her to three years in prison that will be replaced by community service and reimbursement to the State of $95,000.

The Court determined that the work of public utility must be carried out according to their profession.

According to the Prosecutor’s Office, it was verified that Mrs. Cañas, known as La Tía Bubú on Salvadoran television, and her ex-husband Mauricio Funes, presented false documents in patrimonial declarations to favor their son Diego Roberto, who was being investigated for using public funds in vehicle purchase.

The Prosecutor’s Office assures that it verified that the money used by the son of Cañas and the ex-president had as its origin the state coffers.

Funes, his partner —Ada Mitchell Guzmán, their children Diego Roberto and Carlos Mauricio Funes Velasco— are in Nicaragua, where in September 2016 they received political asylum from the government of President Daniel Ortega while a civil trial for illicit enrichment was underway and while still no arrest warrant had been issued against him.

Funes Cañas is required by the Salvadoran justice for the crime of money and asset laundering.

In brief statements to the press upon leaving the hearing, Mrs. Cañas said that “what satisfies me the most is that I am going to resume my life and work, which is what people have seen that I have done.”

For his part, the ex-president who closely follows everything that happens in the country reacted immediately and said on his Twitter account that “Regina Cañas’s negotiation with the FGR has an obvious morbidity. If she confessed that she simulated a personal loan and that she did not give any money to her son, why should she pay $95 thousand, which is the equivalent of the supposed loan that did not materialize?”

“There is no doubt that this negotiation is no more than a media show due to the impossibility of the FGR to present irrefutable incriminating evidence in the Public Looting case,” he added.

Former President Funes has five criminal proceedings open in various courts in El Salvador, including the trial for the diversion of $351 million that, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, went to the accounts of front men, family members and those close to him.