Bukele rejects complaints about an alleged increase in his assets, calling them “attacks”

Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele rejected through his social networks reports about an alleged increase in his family’s assets.

The president harshly criticized the investigation in a publication where he even described as “imbeciles” those who identified as a corruption scheme the way in which he and five members of his family multiplied their real estate assets twelvefold during his first term.

“We are not perfect, and I am sure that there will be a lot to criticize and question. But corruption? Don’t be imbeciles,” said the popular president on his favorite social network, “stands up to the analysis of an accountant, much less a financier.”

The investigationpublished under the media alliance Editorial Regional, Focos and Dromómanos, revealed that Bukele and his family clan, including his mother, brothers and wife, bought properties for 9.2 million dollars, amassing 92% of those properties in just one year.

Furthermore, a second postreveals that the president’s brother and main advisor, Karim Bukele, bought a building in the Historic Center of San Salvador for 1.3 million dollars, weeks after Congress approved a law that exempts from taxes those who invest in that area.

The Historic Center of San Salvador has been under renovation for a few years, and has been the president’s favorite setting to deliver his victory and inauguration speeches.

Along with the coastal area, this heritage area is one of the Bukele’s biggest bets. In the area, squares, restaurants are being remodeled and buildings such as the recently inaugurated Library are being built. BINAES, financed with funds from the Chinese government.

Bukele considered that both journalistic investigations do not have accounting support; while his brother affirmed that the transactions are legal, and that they have done so without using loan sharks and transferring assets from one company to another.

“I did it under My NAME, using the private banking system, checks with my signature, DECLARING and paying ALL taxes for the transaction and with public documents in front of the previous owners,” said Karim Bukele in his X account.

This is one of the few times that the presidential family responds to a journalistic investigation, since they do not usually give interviews to independent media or make public their asset statements.

What was the research methodology?

According to Salvadoran journalist Jaime Quintanilla, author of the investigation, while searching for data on the delivery of mortgage loans from a State bank, he identified that the Bukele family appeared to have more properties under their belt, despite not having obtained those loans.

He and his work team decided to review the profiles of the presidential family’s companies, discovering companies whose assets were $15,000 before Bukele assumed the presidency and today exceed $6 million.

It was in this way that they found farms, beach ranches, apartments and country houses in the name of Bukele, his brothers, his mother and wife.

“It has been very interesting how they have reacted because in the first investigation, in which we revealed the exorbitant increase in the number of real estate properties, they opted for silence,” Quintanilla told the Voice of America.

Today, “when we revealed that they have taken advantage of laws, they had an angry reaction. They chose to evade, to offend. There is no way to deny the investigation because it has been done with official documents, which come from the public record,” he said.

The Association of Journalists of El Salvador (APES) raised an alert regarding the events, and its director, Sergio Arauz, told the VOA: “There were attacks on the page of the Regional Editorial Media, whose site was down after receiving a brute force attack.”

The APES reminded the Bukele government that the job of the press is to supervise the “use and abuse” of the government, and they said they were alert to “any action that puts the integrity of the journalist and the media alliance that published the investigation at risk.” ”.

The publication questions the increase in assets of the Bukele family in just one year, and the conflict of interest involved in purchasing properties in areas benefiting from tax exemptions.

Although the presidential family assures that they were acquired with loans from private banks, the media alliance questions the transparency of these million-dollar loans without having support to support the debt.

The Supreme Court of Justice keeps President Bukele’s asset declarations under reserve.

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