El Salvador Justice: Saca Returns Home

Elias Antonio Saca appeared in court in El Salvador on Thursday to formally document his freedom. He had just finished serving a ten-year prison term for corruption offenses committed during his time in office.

The 61-year-old former leader accepted a plea deal that required him to admit to diverting and laundering more than $300 million from public funds. These funds were mismanaged during his administration from 2004 to 2009. His legal representative, Mario Machado, stated that Saca completed the full duration of the sentence without receiving any early-release benefits.

Saca was initially taken into custody in 2016 while attending his son's wedding ceremony. In September 2018, a judge imposed a five-year sentence for embezzlement and a separate five-year sentence for money laundering. The plea agreement reduced his potential exposure from a possible thirty-year term to the ten years he ultimately served.

In 2019, Saca was found guilty of offering $10,000 to a court employee to secure information regarding a case against him. A judge later ruled that this additional penalty was absorbed into his existing ten-year sentence rather than added to it. The former head of state was a businessman and radio broadcaster who led the right-wing Nationalist Republican Alliance party.

Prosecutors originally argued that Saca took funds from the state budget for personal use and for his political organization, including more than $7 million for his former party. He has also been ordered to repay $260 million to the state treasury. Saca is one of four Salvadoran presidents to face corruption charges, joining his successor Mauricio Funes, who fled to Nicaragua in September 2016 and died there in 2025.