(Reuters) – Former Salvadoran President Mauricio Funes died late on Tuesday in Nicaragua, where the leftist leader had lived since 2016 to avoid corruption charges in his homeland. He was 65 years old.
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 of a “serious chronic illness,” the statement said, without elaborating.
Funes fled El Salvador for Nicaragua nearly a decade ago, after Salvadoran prosecutors began a criminal investigation into alleged corruption charges, resulting in the issuance of five arrest warrants against him.
The government of President Daniel Ortega, with whom Funes was politically and ideologically close, granted him Nicaraguan citizenship in 2019, protecting him from any extradition requests.
