An official investigation reveals that corrupt El Salvadoran officials cut a secret deal with MS-13. Osiris Luna Meza and Carlos Amilcar Marroquin Chica “led, facilitated, and organized a number of secret meetings involving incarcerated gang leaders.” If you can’t beat them, bribe them to behave.
A truce with MS-13
The U.S. Department of Treasury calls Mara Salvatrucha 13 a “criminal organization” and everybody knows all about MS-13’s “serious transnational criminal activities.”
Along with dealing drugs comes “kidnapping, human smuggling, sex trafficking, murder, assassinations, racketeering, blackmail, extortion, and immigration offenses.”
The unscrupulous officials referred to as “Luna” and “Marroquin” in court documents, to keep the players with overlapping names straight, made a secret deal, in which known MS-13 gang members “were allowed to enter the prison facilities and meet with senior gang leadership.”
The exasperating part is these meetings “were part of the Government of El Salvador’s efforts to negotiate a secret truce with gang leadership.”
In 2020, with U.S. President Donald Trump’s Justice Department cracking down hard on their high-profile atrocities, “Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s administration provided financial incentives to Salvadoran gangs MS-13 and 18th Street Gang (Barrio 18) to ensure that incidents of gang violence and the number of confirmed homicides remained low.”
Election part of the deal
During the back-cell prison negotiations with Luna and Marroquin, MS-13 and Barrio 18 “gang leadership also agreed to provide political support to the Nuevas Ideas political party in upcoming elections.” Unsurprisingly the party “won a two-thirds super majority in legislative elections in 2021.”
Representing the government in the conferences were Luna, who serves as both the Chief of the Salvadoran Penal System and Vice Minister of Justice and Public Security, and Marroquin, who sits as Chairman of the Social Fabric Reconstruction Unit.
Luna and Marroquin agreed to fork over “Salvadoran government financial allocations in 2020.” MS-13 and Barrio 18 also “received privileges for gang leadership incarcerated in Salvadoran prisons, such as the provision of mobile phones and prostitutes.”
What more could they desire? How about some support for COVID-19 restrictions in exchange. It’s no wonder Kamala Harris has been hiding in the White House basement.
“Amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, Luna also negotiated an agreement with gang leaders from MS-13 and Barrio 18 for the gangs’ support of President Bukele’s national quarantine in gang-controlled areas.” To sweeten the pot, “Luna participated in a scheme to steal and re-sell government purchased staple goods that were originally destined for COVID-19 pandemic relief.” He had the nerve to sell the goods he stole from the government back to the government.
“These items were transferred to private companies and then resold on the private market or back to the government.” Along with Alma Yanira Meza Olivares (Meza) they cooked up “a scheme to embezzle millions of dollars from El Salvador’s prison commissary system. They also created fraudulent job positions within the prison system, in which supposed “employees” would receive monthly paychecks and return most of the earnings back to Luna and Meza.”
