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ASSOCIATED PRESS
In this Aug. 8 photo, El Salvador’s former President Tony Saca attends an audience with a judge at the Isidro Menendez Judicial Complex in San Salvador, El Salvador, regarding charges of embezzling hundreds of millions of dollars in government funds in return for a lighter sentence. On today, Saca was sentenced to 10 years in prison.
SAN SALVADOR, El Salvador >> Former President Tony Saca was sentenced to 10 years in prison for corruption today after pleading guilty to diverting more than $300 million in state funds.
A Salvadoran court handed down the judgment, making the 53-year-old Saca the first ex-president of the Central American nation to be convicted of graft.
He was accused of diverting the money from government coffers to favor his businesses and third parties. Saca and five longtime associates had agreed to plead guilty previously in return for more lenient sentence.
Saca and his former private secretary, Elmer Charlaix, got five years on a charge of embezzlement and five more for money laundering. They had faced up to 30 years before the plea deal.
The others received sentences of three to five years.
Yet another co-defendant did not plead guilty and his sentence was not immediately known. Prosecutors had sought 16 years for him.
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