El Salvador’s Bukele Declares ‘War on Corruption,’ Plans White Collar Prison

El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele announced a “war” on corruption during his fourth annual presidential speech on Thursday evening.

Bukele also pledged to build a new prison for “white-collar criminals” as part of the “war.”

Bukele described corruption as an “endemic evil” that “like gangs, has tentacles at all levels of government.”

“Just as we have fought gangs head-on with the full force of the state and with all the legal tools we can, without hesitation at any time, we will also launch a frontal war against corruption,” Bukele said during the speech. “Just as we built a jail for terrorists, we will also build a jail for the corrupt.”

Salvadorans watched Bukele’s fourth yearly address to the nation through a mandatory broadcast on national television and radio stations. The government also published the speech on social media.

“Just as we deployed security forces and rounded up gang members until we put them in jail, we will also pursue white-collar criminals, wherever they come from,” Bukele continued. He did not give further explanation on the proposed prison for the corrupt, nor any details regarding the funding for it.

The Salvadoran president’s pledge against corruption adds a new challenge to his ongoing campaign against the country’s deadly gangs, most prominently MS-13 and 18th Street. Bukele placed the country in a de facto state of martial law in March 2022 that remains in vigor, used to enact a fierce crackdown on gang violence. Bukele has repeatedly declared the “state of exception” a resounding success, using data such as El Salvador marking 365 non-consecutive days without registered homicides throughout the four years of his administration by May.

The crackdown on gangs has resulted in a dramatic reduction in violence and the “virtual disappearance” of the gangs in the nation’s communities. Bukele’s administration also built a 40,000-bed “mega prison” and has begun filling it with gang members.

WATCH: Law and Order: El Salvador Builds “Mega Prison” to Eradicate Gangs:

Presidency of the Republic of El Salvador via Storyful

Bukele announced that while his speech was underway, El Salvador’s prosecutor general was conducting a search and seizure of all of the properties belonging to former Salvadoran President Alfredo Cristiani, whose presidential term lasted from 1989 to 1994. A group of the nation’s lawmakers presented a notice to El Salvador’s prosecutor’s office in 2021 against Cristiani for possible corruption crimes.

A report published by the Salvadoran newspaper El Faro in 2018 revealed that, during the last five months of Cristiani’s administration, the former president issued over 100 checks to his name that totalled $5.5 million to unknown destinations.

Salvadoran courts ordered the provisional arrest of Cristiani in March 2022 for his alleged involvement in covering up the murders of six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper, and the housekeeper’s daughter by Salvadoran soldiers in November 1989 during the country’s civil war. Cristiani left El Salvador in June 2021.

Bukele assured that his new war against corruption will be broad and cover “all levels,” reasoning that corruption is committed by state officials in collusion with private entities. 

“In this country the corrupt spend all their time thinking about how to get more money out of the State’s coffers and – watch out – for a corrupt official to exist, there also has to be a corrupting businessman,” he said.

Bukele also announced during his speech that he will promote legal reforms to reduce the number of El Salvador’s municipalities from 262 to 44 and to reduce the number of seats in Congress from 84 to 60. Bukele claimed that the reforms he proposes reduce bureaucracy and state corruption while lightening the public tax burden.

Congress will have to approve those proposals, but it is currently majority composed of pro-Bukele lawmakers.

Despite El Salvador’s constitution explicitly forbidding presidential re-elections and heavily punishing those who promote them, Bukele, whose term will end in June 2024, has expressed his intention to run for re-election next year — a move heavily favored by the nation’s electorate.

The Salvadoran president’s crackdown on gang-related violence has been a fundamental factor in his high approval ratings, which have hovered at around 90 percent throughout the year.

Bukele’s administration has also shifted the country’s foreign policy towards communist China. In November, Bukele announced the start of negotiations with China to broker a free trade deal after the free trade agreement that El Salvador signed with Taiwan in 2007 was suspended by the Central American nation’s Supreme Court of Justice in that same month.

Days before the announcement of the free trade negotiations with China, the Asian nation reportedly offered to buy off El Salvador’s $667 million external bond debt from holders. El Salvador joined China’s predatory Belt and Road Initiative under Bukele’s presidency in 2019.

Follow Frances Martel on Facebook and Twitter.