(Credit: Legislative Assembly of El Salvador)
(CNN Spanish) ––
Two deputies from the Nuevas Ideas party were expelled this Wednesday to face criminal charges for the alleged crime of improper bribery to the detriment of the public administration.
In a special plenary session of the Legislative Assembly, with 61 of 84 votes, deputies José García and Gerardo Aguilar were stripped of their immunity and suspended from exercising their functions.
“They did not betray this Assembly, nor a party, but an entire country.
They became treacherous and with this they committed a crime.
For me, this is reason enough to vote for the removal of immunity,” assured Ernesto Castro, president of the Legislative Assembly.
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The Attorney General of El Salvador asked the Assembly to remove the immunity of the two deputies after the Nuevas Ideas party released an audio in October 2021 in which the voices of the accused legislators are allegedly heard during a meeting with José Rogelio García Castro , known as Roy García, representative of a group of Salvadorans living abroad and who promotes the formation of a new political party in the country.
According to the accusation, those named and García would have talked about benefits in exchange for convincing 20 deputies from Nuevas Ideas to leave the party of the president of El Salvador Nayib Bukele.
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The two accused deputies remained silent this Wednesday before the questions of the journalists in the Legislative Assembly.
They also did not react when the audio was made public.
For their part, their lawyers consider that there are no elements for the accusation and hope to clarify everything in the courts of justice.
The crime of improper bribery, contemplated in article 331 of the Penal Code, establishes that "the official or public employee, agent of authority or public authority, who by himself or through an intermediary, requests or receives a gift or any other undue advantage or accepts the promise of remuneration of the same nature, to carry out an act of their functions or for an act already carried out of their position, will be sanctioned with imprisonment from two to four years and special disqualification from the position or employment for the same time. ”
The Legislative Assembly, according to the procedure, will deliver a report to the First Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court of Justice so that it can process the judicial process against the parliamentarians.
In the case of Roy García, a court ordered his capture in November 2021 for the crime of active bribery.
In October, after the release of the audio, García told reporters that he believed he was not doing anything illegal and that he had attended the meeting at the request of the deputies.
Garcia subsequently left the country and authorities say they do not know his whereabouts.
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