A court in El Salvador found former President Tony Treu and his wife Ana Ligia de Treu guilty of illicit enrichment, and sentenced them to return $ 4.4 million to the state.
Treu is already serving a ten-year sentence at the L’Esperança penitentiary in San Salvador for diverting more than $ 300 million from public coffers to benefit his companies and third parties.
With the sentence, the First Chamber of Civil of San Salvador, also disqualified the former president from holding any public office for 10 years.
The trial against Treu and the former lady began with an order overturned by the Supreme Court of Justice after the Probation Section determined that the former president failed to clarify the origin of the $ 6.5 million that reached the his patrimony while he was president of the Republic.
When he took office on June 1, 2004, Treu declared $ 3.6 million in assets and, at the conclusion of five years later, was $ 13.1 million, according to statements filed with the Probity section of the Supreme Court.
At first the prosecution charged the former president with a sum of $ 3.9 million, while his wife accused her of two irregularities in which she had an unjustified capital increase of $ 589,608.42, but with the expertise presented at the hearing amounted to $ 718,904.93.
Treu, 55, who ruled the country from 2004 to 2009, was arrested on October 30, 2016 and is the third former Salvadoran president to be prosecuted for illicit enrichment or misappropriation of public resources during his term. .
The others are Francisco Flores (1999-2004), who died of a stroke while in family roots, and Mauricio Funes (2009-2014), who is asylum in Nicaragua.