(Reuters) – Former Salvadoran president, Mauricio Funes, died late on Tuesday in Nicaragua, where the leftist leader had been living since 2016 to avoid corruption charges in his home country. He was 65.
Nicaraguan authorities confirmed the death of Funes, who was president of El Salvador from 2009 to 2014, in a statement on the government’s official website.
Funes died from a “serious chronic illness,” the statement said, without providing further details.
Funes fled El Salvador for Nicaragua nearly a decade ago, after Salvadoran prosecutors began a criminal investigation into alleged corruption charges, which resulted in five arrest warrants against him.
The government of President Daniel Ortega, with whom Funes had political and ideological affinity, granted him Nicaraguan citizenship in 2019, which shielded him from any extradition requests.
(Reporting by Gabriela Selser; Writing by Sarah Kinosian; Editing by David Alire Garcia and Bernadette Baum)
