The U.S. State Department has named more than 50 current and former officials, including former presidents and active lawmakers, suspected of corruption or undermining democracy in three Central American countries.
Many of the cases were known in Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador, but the inclusion of names on the U.S. list buoyed the hopes of anti-corruption crusaders. The list was provided to the U.S. Congress in compliance with the “U.S.-Northern Triangle Enhanced Engagement pgslot Act” pushed last year by U.S. Rep. Eliot Engel.
Its release comes at a time that the Biden administration has given new attention to endemic corruption in the region as one of the factors driving Central Americans to migrate to the U.S.
Ricardo Zúñiga, White House special envoy for the Northern Triangle, said Thursday that the list was not final and that pulling U.S. visas from those named does not exclude the possibility of other sanctions. The law requires the State Department to provide a list to Congress at least once a year.
The list was composed using classified and unclassified information and more attention was given to cases involving people currently in government or in positions close to power rather than older offenses, Zúñiga said.
“Corruption and attacks on democracy are viewed as some of the most important root causes of irregular migration from Central America,” he said. “They hobble governments, they distort markets, they undercut development efforts, and ultimately they demoralize a population that decides to embark on a very dangerous irregular migration to Mexico and the United States because they don't believe we can build their futures at home. ”
Congress' call for the report reflects growing concern “about the level of systemic corruption in the countries of the Northern Triangle, the significant backsliding that we've seen across the region in the last several years,” and the need to "ensure that our assistance is not ending up in the pockets of corrupt officials or their allies,” said Adriana Beltran, director of citizen security at the Washington Office on Latin America, a nongovernmental organization focused on human rights issues.
