Bukele administration freezes Salvadoran news outlet’s assets in latest act of retaliation

Mexico City, May 8, 2026—El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s administration must immediately unfreeze the bank accounts and property of El Faro’s shareholders and end its use of the country’s Ministry of Finance as a tool for harassment of the press, the Committee to Protect Journalists said Friday.

Between February and April 2026, the Salvadoran government placed “preventative annotations” on a bank account and real estate property belonging to two partners of Trípode S.A. de C.V., the parent company of the independent news outlet El Faro, according to a statement by the outlet and news reports. The measures were reportedly taken as a guarantee for alleged tax debts.

“The targeting of individual shareholders’ personal assets marks a dangerous escalation in the Bukele administration’s long-standing effort to dismantle El Faro through administrative harassment,” said Cristina Zahar, Latin America program coordinator, in São Paulo. “The administration should stop using government entities as tools to carry out its political agenda.” 

The asset freezes are the latest escalation in a series of financial and legal actions against the outlet that began in 2020 after Bukele alleged on national television that El Faro was under a “serious investigation for money laundering.” Following that announcement, the Ministry of Finance launched four separate audits into Trípode. When the audits failed to produce evidence of money laundering, authorities accused the outlet of tax evasion. In 2023, El Faro moved its administrative and legal operations to Costa Rica, citing lack of judicial independence and an ongoing “campaign of aggression” against them by Bukele’s administration.

In a statement, El Faro says the timing of the Bukele government’s legal maneuvers appears connected to their investigative work following the release of The Deal, a documentary co-produced with PBS Frontline, reporting alleged government pacts with criminal gangs, and came days after the outlet’s deputy editor, Sergio Arauz, testified before the Tom Lantos Human Rights Commission in the U.S. Congress.

CPJ has documented years of harassment against the El Faro newsroom, from Pegasus spyware surveillance and to exile after the outlet reported links to Bukele’s administration and gangs in 2025. 

CPJ’s email to the Salvadoran Ministry of Finance for comment did not receive an immediate reply.