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On September 8, a Salvadoran Air Force helicopter with an unusual passenger list —eight members of Nayib Bukele’s security cabinet, including Police Director Mauricio Arriaza Chicas— crashed at night, in the rain. They had gone to El Amatillo, on the Honduran border, and picked up businessman Manuel Coto Barrientos, former manager of the savings and credit cooperative COSAVI, a man accused of fraud and money laundering.
At 8:54 p.m., a state television station had published a video of Coto’s transfer, the man kneeling in front of police leadership, to a dramatic soundtrack. At 11:14, the Armed Forces announced that the helicopter that had picked them up had crashed.
Bukele quickly responded: “What happened cannot remain a simple ‘accident.’ It must be deeply investigated to the fullest extent. We will request international help.”
COSAVI, famous for sponsoring municipal Christmas parties and parades, had become notorious after the threat of a run on the bank earlier this year. Its top executives were accused of embezzling millions in customer savings and Coto fled the country. In March, clients began to denounce on social media that COSAVI had restricted the amount of money they could withdraw from their accounts.
By May, videos were published of COSAVI clients arriving at branches to demand the full withdrawal of their funds. The attorney general said that they detected increases in the net worth of some of the directors during the process of turning the cooperative into a savings bank. On May 9, the Prosecutor’s Office announced at a press conference an indictment against 32 people, including eight managers, for embezzling $35 million dollars.
The accusations included public fraud, money and asset laundering, and illicit association. A week later, the Superintendency of the Financial System announced the beginning of a process to return savings for cooperants with less than $2,000 dollars.
In September of last year, 11 municipalities had debts totaling $25.3 million with the cooperative, according to a municipal debt report of the Ministry of Finance.
The case also had political undertones. Congresswoman Marcela Villatoro, from the opposition Arena party, introduced a motion to create a legislative commission to investigate COSAVI. In the Assembly, in which Nayib Bukele’s party and allies hold 57 of 60 seats, that petition went nowhere. There appeared to be a conflict of interest: according to Treasury Ministry campaign finance records obtained by Acción Ciudadana, COSAVI contributed $60,000 to the ruling party Nuevas Ideas for the 2021 legislative campaign.
On May 26, a group of affected individuals wrote an open letter requesting a meeting with the Superintendency of the Financial System to obtain a detailed recovery plan for their savings. They have also sought meetings with the authorities over social media. On September 3, the Superintendency announced that it had authorized the withdrawal of funds for individuals with savings up to $20,000.
No records in Panama
On July 27, when Attorney General Rodolfo Delgado announced on X that Coto had been captured in Panama, Bukele was quick to try to take advantage of the optics: “To the opposition who said the administration had helped him escape… I imagine you’ll take that back now,” he wrote on social media.
Coto also had his own company, INVERCOBA S.A DE C.V., founded in 2014, according to commercial records, to sell and repair vehicles. He often rubbed shoulders with the Bukele-sphere: In 2021, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was eager to promote his meeting with Vice Minister Adriana Mira and the French textile company Palenzo, which was seeking to enter the Salvadoran market.
Former prosecutors consulted by El Faro and property records reviewed by this outlet validated a judicial document first published online by hacktivist group Ciberinteligencia from the Sixth Tribunal Against Organized Crime, dated Mar. 3, 2024, authorizing raids on nine COSAVI facilities in El Salvador and one in Los Angeles. The raids on the savings cooperative were kept hidden from the public, which did not learn of the judicial process until two months later.
Three former prosecutors familiar with the case, who spoke with El Faro on condition of anonymity, explained that, while they filed an accusation on March 9, evidence emerged much earlier. One of the sources told El Faro English that the Financial Investigation Unit (UIF) received a complaint of siphoning of funds in November 2018. They put together an initial file to bring charges against 20 people, with the chief responsible being Manuel Coto.
In February 2020, the UIF received the order to carry out a money-laundering analysis, which entailed sending requests to banks for transaction histories, pulling property records from the National Records Center (CNR), and freezing accounts and properties. “We were then confronted with the closure of the bank and government offices, because of Covid-19,” explained one of the sources.
The financial and property analysis concluded in January 2024, according to one of the former prosecutors. The Attorney General’s Office then approached the Sixth Tribunal to request the raids and asset seizures.
Coto fled the country as the investigation swirled. Delgado called him the “main suspect” in the alleged embezzlement scheme and thanked Panamanian authorities for “providing us with all the necessary support so that Manuel Alberto Coto Barrientos is deported as soon as possible and that he pays for the crimes committed in our country.”
But the new administration of President José Raúl Mulino in Panama says otherwise. On Wednesday, Ministry of Public Security Spokesperson Aurelio Martínez told El Faro English: “There is no record of the capture of that citizen. Maybe what could have happened is that he was a passenger in transit and they did not even let him in. There is no record of detention or any kind about that citizen or any departure from Panama.”
Why September 8?
Hours before his death, Coto was escorted to the El Salvador-Honduras border by Interpol. It is still unknown how he ended up in Honduras, months after his alleged first capture in Panama, or exactly in what kind of police operation he was arrested. But according to Honduran Security Secretary Gustavo Sánchez, Coto was detained in the evening of September 7 in Choluteca, while driving with a human trafficker to the United States.
“Not only did we achieve his [Coto’s] arrest at the international level but, thanks to our intelligence services and the authorities of friendly countries, we avoided a long and complex extradition process. If you know, you know,” wrote Bukele online. (Two weeks earlier, Honduras had denounced its U.S. extradition treaty.)
“I think it is very difficult for this to have been an attack,” said a source who for years held different leadership posts in the Police, asserting that it was more likely a blunder due to the adverse weather. “In order for a helicopter to be sabotaged, many people would have had to coordinate in a very sophisticated operation.”
The helicopter, a Vietnam War-era model capable of holding a dozen passengers, could have breached protocol by traveling at night and in the rain, according to the source, especially odd given that normal flights of this nature would have waited until the morning. Nor is it normal for the director of the National Civil Police or his immediate subordinates to join such trips to pick up accused criminals.
Shortly after its departure, the helicopter crashed in San Eduardo, Pasaquina, in the department of La Unión. All passengers on board died.
Public figures on Bukele’s periphery have gone further in pushing unfounded theories of potential malice: “It will take time for us to assimilate that today might be the beginning of a struggle on a different level,” wrote party official Silvio Aquino. “If suspicions turn out to be true, we would be facing an attack against high-ranking members of the security cabinet. If it is confirmed that this was not an accident, those responsible would have taken the life of a hero. Of course this will not go unpunished. We kneel only to God.”
The U.S. Embassy in El Salvador announced on Tuesday that a group of experts will arrive in the coming days to support the investigation into the crash.
The top cops
In a state funeral on Wednesday that was streamed live for over six hours, Bukele addressed the nation in a half-hour speech in front of a row of caskets.
“Yesterday a video appeared on social media where the commissioner, my friend, Mauricio Arriaza Chicas, said: ‘At that moment [of Arriaza’s appointment] I felt that my life’s work in the institution was recognized,’” said Bukele. “So I picked up the phone,” he continued, “and called [communications secretary] Sofía [Medina] and audiovisual producer Mario Piche and said, Where did that video come from? I feel like he [Arriaza] is speaking to me from heaven, because I hadn’t seen it.”
The president also ventured his first public statements on the search to name Arriaza’s successor. “If I have to think of a replacement, which I never considered, [...] it would be commissioner ‘Carabinero’, Douglas Omar García Funes. He would have been the natural replacement of Chicas, but he passed away, too. He is behind me,” said Bukele, pointing to the row of caskets.
Rómulo Pompilio Romero, deputy director of investigations, another of the most senior officials in the National Civil Police, also died in the crash.
Commissioner Arriaza was a fiercely loyal member of Bukele’s cabinet. In November 2020, as prosecutors moved to seize evidence of pandemic-related corruption tied to Health Minister Francisco Alabí, the National Civil Police attempted to obstruct their entry into the ministry.
Even more brazenly, in May 2021, when the Legislative Assembly illegally removed the attorney general and Constitutional Chamber magistrates, the Police sent guards to the Supreme Court to secure the entry of their replacements into the judicial facilities.
“He was not just any director of the National Civil Police; he was the police director of the Territorial Control Plan, of the state of exception, and of the war against the gangs,” posted the president on his X account. “A loyal and incorruptible man, who fought against everything, even when nobody believed we could win, and we won.”
In November 2020, the Attorney General’s Office had filed a request to prosecute Arriaza Chicas for breach of duty, for allegedly defying an order from the Legislative Assembly to enforce a summons of the finance minister during a probe of pandemic spending.
President Bukele at the time accused the top prosecutor of working on behalf of the opposition and defended the head of the Police as being “the only one who has truly fought against crime.” Arriaza Chicas’ defense team included the current Attorney General, Rodolfo Delgado, and now-Constitutional Magistrate Nahum Martínez.
On the contrary, InSight Crime wrote of Arriaza Chicas in 2020: “A police chief allegedly protecting cabinet ministers under criminal investigation underscores how the force’s highest officials still act in ways that obstruct justice and guarantee impunity.”
*Additional reporting from Nelson Rauda, Ramiro Guevara, and Graciela Barrera
This article appeared in the September 13 edition of the El Faro English newsletter. Subscribe here.
