Luis Antonio Martínez González, who was elected Attorney General of El Salvador in December 2012 during a period when the country’s two main political parties, ARENA and the FMLN, informally negotiated power-sharing deals across state institutions, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison. The conviction stems from the high-profile Rais-Martínez case.
The ruling, issued on Friday by the Third Sentencing Court of San Salvador, found Martínez guilty of procedural fraud, for which he received five years in prison, and failure to investigate, which carried another five years. The Attorney General’s Office (FGR) accused him of fabricating evidence to benefit businessman Enrique Rais in proceedings against attorney Mario Calderón and his wife, Claudia Herrera. Prosecutors had sought a 15-year sentence.
The conviction was announced exactly nine years after Martínez was first arrested in 2016 for the same case, when Rais was also detained. “After several weeks of trial, former Attorney General Luis Martínez has been sentenced to 10 years in prison for procedural fraud and omission of investigation,” the FGR wrote on its official X account.
Other defendants were also sentenced in the case. Julio Adalberto Arriaza González, a former prosecutor’s office employee, was given five years for procedural fraud, while Héctor Francisco Grimaldi received six years for two counts of procedural fraud without the possibility of sentence reduction.
The case highlights the legacy of political negotiations that shaped Martínez’s rise to power and underscores El Salvador’s ongoing efforts to strengthen accountability in its justice system.