Mauricio Funes: journalist turned El Salvador president

El Salvador's ex-president Mauricio Funes died Tuesday at the age of 65 in Nicaragua, where he fled two years after leaving office and gained asylum following accusations of corruption in his country.

Leading El Salvador from 2009 to 2014, Funes was a bespectacled former TV journalist who modeled himself on moderate leftist leaders, despite heading a party of former Marxist rebels.

The former pupil of Jesuits at the University of Central America made his name as a journalist, including for CNN in Spanish.

He carried out interviews with members of the ex-rebel Farabundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN) -- the party he went on to lead -- as they battled a US-backed military government in a devastating 12-year civil war.

As the first FMLN presidential candidate without a rebel fighter background, he attracted some voters wary of the FMLN's rebel warfare past.

Accused of embezzling $351 million from state coffers, among other corruption charges during his administration, Funes fled to Nicaragua in 2016 where he was granted asylum and later Nicaraguan nationality.

Funes, who had argued that he was the victim of political persecution, had five criminal proceedings pending before the Salvadoran courts, including embezzlement.

In May 2023, he was sentenced in absentia to 14 years in prison for alleged secret negotiations held during his presidency with criminal gangs terrorizing the Central American nation.

In June last year, he was also sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for money laundering, after being found guilty of favoring a Guatemalan company so that it would be awarded a bridge construction contract.

- Leftist leader -

Funes began teaching after high school, aged barely 16, before later beginning -- but not finishing -- a degree in literature and communications.

He launched his journalism career in 1985 at the national television channel, where he became director of information and interviewed the tiny Central American nation's top politicians for 14 years.

During the 1980-1992 civil war, in which more than 70,000 died, his elder brother Roberto was killed by police.

Funes joined CNN in June 1991 and left in September 2007 to become presidential candidate for the FMLN.

He welcomed comparisons to Brazilian moderate leftist President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva and US President Barack Obama during his campaign.

He once said he wanted to maintain El Salvador's close relationship with Washington.

But the United States later blacklisted Funes, making him ineligible for a US visa, after the State Department accused him of schemes that resulted in "pilfering hundreds of millions of dollars from state coffers."

Funes was born on October 18, 1959, and was formerly married to Brazilian Wanda Pignato.

He had five children including Alejandro, who was killed in Paris in 2007.

© Agence France-Presse