Among the relatives of the former president who have been nationalized as Nicaraguans in recent days are his son Salvador Antonio Sánchez Villalta and two great-grandchildren aged 13 and 3.
Several relatives of former President Salvador Sánchez Cerén received Nicaraguan nationality from the regime of Daniel Ortega, who on July 30 had already granted nationality to the former president himself, his wife, his daughter and his son. grandson through the Director of Migration and Aliens of the Ministry of the Interior, Juan Emilio Rivas Benites.
The information on the nationalization of the relatives of Sánchez Ceren was known by the edition of this August 24 of La Gaceta, the official newspaper of Nicaragua, which under registration numbers 2021-2974; 2021-2973 i; 2021-2958 confirms that the nationalized relatives of the former president are his son Salvador Antonio Sánchez Villalta and his great-grandchildren Alejandra Sofia Saved Sánchez and three-year-old Carlos Manuel Pacheco Guardado.
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Also, in the same publication you can see with the registration number 2021-2957 the nationalization of another Salvadoran identified as Ana Lidia Penya Sosa, however, it is not possible to check if it has any kind of relationship with former President Sánchez Cerén .
On July 30, through the same official newspaper it became known that both Sánchez Ceren and his wife Rosa Margarita Villalta, his daughter Claudia Lissette Sánchez Villalta and his grandson Juan Carlos Saved Sánchez had received Nicaraguan nationality.
The granting of this nationality to the former president and his family comes at a time when Sánchez Ceren has an arrest warrant in El Salvador, for allegedly receiving at least $ 530,000 in bonuses from public funds when he acted as vice-president during the term of the also nationalized Nicaraguan and fugitive from justice Mauricio Funes, between 2009 and 2014 according to the Prosecutor’s Office.
Sánchez Cerén and other former government officials of Mauricio Funes have an international arrest warrant. Photos: Archive / EDH
According to the prosecution’s indictment, both Sánchez Ceren and other former FMLN government officials participated in the fraud in the state for up to $ 351 million, so that five former officials are currently in pretrial detention.
On August 16, it became known that Gerson Martínez, another of the former officials with an arrest warrant and who served as Minister of Public Works in the same period of Funes, had received political asylum in Mexico to be considered a “politically persecuted,” as confirmed by his defense lawyer Pedro Cruz.
“The Mexican government has carefully examined the data of this case, as well as the entire political and judicial situation in the country to firmly determine in an official resolution that Mr. Gerson Martínez is a political persecutor in El Salvador and it grants refugee status in accordance with Mexican law and in accordance with international law, “Cruz said on the occasion.
Read also: Mexico grants political asylum to former Minister of Public Works Gerson Martinez
The former government officials of Mauricio Funes who are currently in custody are the former Minister of Health and former mayor of San Salvador, Violeta Menjívar; former Deputy Minister of Science and Technology Erlinda Handal; the former Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Hugo Flores, the former Minister of Finance, Carlos Cáceres and the former deputy Calixto Mejía.
For his part, the former officials with an international arrest warrant and dissemination, filmed by Interpol, are Salvador Sánchez Cerén, former president and former vice president; Lina Pohl, former Minister of the Environment, Gerson Martínez (Manuel Orlando Quinteros), former Minister of Public Works; and José Guillermo López Suárez, former president of the Autonomous Port Executive Commission (CEPA).
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