MEXICO CITY — Salvadoran investigative outlet El Faro introduced Thursday that two of its members’ assets, together with a checking account and property, have been frozen, in what it denounced as an escalation of political persecution for its work exposing corruption in the federal government of President Nayib Bukele.
“It’s one other degree of assault towards us with a transparent goal,” El Faro Director Carlos Dada mentioned in a news convention Thursday. “These aren’t fiscal measures. They’re political measures making an attempt to silence us.”
El Faro has publicly sparred with Bukele over its investigations into corruption throughout his administration, together with revelations that his administration negotiated with gangs. The most recent transfer comes shortly after the outlet launched a documentary with PBS Frontline in regards to the gang negotiations.
Bukele, who rose to energy on an anti-corruption platform in 2019 because the area’s youngest chief, has confronted growing criticism from human rights teams for his crackdown on dissent and abuses beneath a four-year state of exception that has imprisoned greater than 91,000 individuals.
Bukele’s workplace didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark, however he has known as the outlet’s reporting “faux news” in the previous.
The outlet realized of the freezing of assets by the financial institution and property registry, in response to Dada, quite than by formal notification from the federal government.
The outlet has been topic to ongoing audits by Salvadoran authorities since 2020, in which the federal government alleges it has evaded $200,000 in taxes, which Dada denied.
El Faro journalists have been the goal of adware assaults, and Pegasus was detected on greater than 20 of its journalists’ iPhones in 2022. Its journalists sued NSO Group in United States federal courtroom later that yr.
In 2023, the outlet moved its headquarters to Costa Rica due to the nation’s repressive local weather and all its members presently dwell in exile outdoors of El Salvador.
Bukele’s crackdown intensified in 2025 with the arrest of distinguished human rights activist Ruth López, who’s in jail a yr later with no trial and restricted entry to household and authorized counsel. Shortly after, in July 2025, the nation’s main human rights group the place she labored, Cristosal, introduced it was leaving El Salvador due to mounting harassment and authorized threats.
The observe of launching audits and confiscating assets has been weaponized in different components of the area to intimidate critics, most notably in Nicaragua beneath President Daniel Ortega.
Claudia Paz y Paz, the director of Costa Rican-based Heart for Justice and Worldwide Regulation, which is representing El Faro in its case earlier than the Inter-American Fee of Human Rights, mentioned in the Thursday news convention that the measure is “retaliation” for El Faro’s work and that it seeks to “silence the voices of journalists.”
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Comply with AP’s Latin America protection at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
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