Antonio Saca, former president of El Salvador, sentenced to two years in prison

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The former president of El Salvador, Elías Antonio Saca, during a judicial hearing on August 17, 2017. (MARVIN RECINOS / AFP / Getty Images)

(CNN Spanish) - The ninth court of instruction in San Salvador sentenced former President Antonio Saca (2004-2009) in an abbreviated trial for the crime of active bribery.

The Prosecutor's Office got the ex-president to confess last Friday that, in 2016, he offered $ 10,000 to an employee of the First Civil Chamber in exchange for advance information. Saca faced an investigation for illicit enrichment since February 2016.

Saca's lawyers reached an agreement with the Prosecutor's Office so that the former president admitted his guilt in exchange for a two-year sentence. According to the Law in El Salvador, the crime of active bribery is punishable by imprisonment of six to ten years.

The lawyer of the ex-president, Mario Machado, is of the opinion that the new sentence could not be added to the sentence of ten years in prison that is already serving in La Esperanza prison.

"He (Saca) has already served more than two years in provisional detention for this case," said Machado.

However, the Prosecutor's Office says that this decision must be taken by a prison surveillance judge who must schedule a hearing in the coming weeks to verify the time that Saca has been detained by this judicial process.

"It will be the prison surveillance judge who will determine how that sentence is going to be served," one of the prosecutors in the case told reporters who asked not to disclose his name.

Antonio Saca