El Faro revealed the identity of a person involved with an offshore company awarded a contract to provide emergency milk powder during the COVID-19 pandemic. The company overcharged by $7 million, according to a government audit. OCCRP also reported the findings.
El Faro posted to X an image of the purchase order for the milk powder, but at a low resolution which blurred the date so it appeared to read 2000 –– two decades before the contract was signed. El Faro then posted a better quality image showing the actual date of 2020, but Bukele claimed the purchase order had been “blatantly manipulated.”
“They are not journalists, they are blatant activists of disinformation,” Bukele posted on X last week.
The purchase agreement was among documents collected by a Salvadorian congressional inquiry set up to investigate irregularities in pandemic contracts. After El Faro obtained the document, people familiar with evidence collected by the inquiry verified its authenticity.
Import-export data from El Salvador and Mexico also corroborated information found in the purchase agreement, including the timing and value of the shipments, as well as the name of the offshore firm.
The purchase agreement was signed by El Salvador’s former agriculture minister, Pablo Anliker, who also posted criticisms of El Faro based on the low-resolution document.
While Bukele and Anliker both focused on confusion over the date of the purchase agreement, they did not address the findings of El Faro’s investigation.
“Instead of distracting attention by falsely accusing a newspaper of committing a crime, the government has the authority to release public information about a multi-million dollar contract that should have benefitted the Salvadoran people,” El Faro said in a statement.
“Defamation of the press by Bukele and his officials has been constant since he became president,” El Faro added.
Reporters Without Borders has also noted “an intimidating climate imposed under President Nayib Bukele since the start of his first term” in 2019.
The government has been “vilifying journalists, and waging smear campaigns,” the advocacy group said in a statement, which highlighted more than 80 attacks on press freedoms during February elections that handed Bukele a second term.
Bukele won in a landslide, with many voters welcoming improved security since he launched a crackdown on violent gangs that have for years terrorized the country. However, critics have condemned rampant human rights violations under a “state of exception” that has suspended some civil liberties since Bukele imposed it two and a half years ago.
In a May statement, 84 rights groups condemned the government’s treatment of many of the more than 80,000 people taken into custody during the state of exception. Detainees have been denied the right to see lawyers and family members, the statement said, while the government has also “jailed political rivals,” and other critics.
In an interview published in Time magazine last week, Bukele defended his government, saying 85 percent of the country’s gang members have been jailed, causing their criminal organizations to fall apart. He said he hoped to lift the state of exception “in the near future.”