Realcent.org

Self-described as the “world’s coolest dictator,” Nayib Bukele was sworn in Saturday for a second term as president of El Salvador in a move widely denounced as illegitimate. El Salvador’s constitution limits presidents to one term and prohibits consecutive reelections. However, a 2021 Constitutional Court ruling approved Bukele’s reelection bid after his allies in the Salvadoran National Assembly illegally removed all five magistrates from the court and replaced them with Bukele supporters.

After tracing the bitcoin listed on El Salvador’s sovereign balance sheet, some researchers wonder if Bitfinex – rather than Nayib Bukele’s administration – controls these coins. According to a newspaper report today from Fabricio Altamirano’s El Diario de Hoy, reblogged on sister website ElSalvador.com, nearly 100% of El Salvador’s bitcoin reserves originate from Bitfinex.

The contentious print and web investigation cites a researcher, Mario Gómez, who further speculates that Bitfinex is aiding Bukele in faking ownership of bitcoin that is in fact donated, loaned, or otherwise controlled by Bitfinex.

As part of a $1.4 billion deal with the IMF, Bukele has promised to provide extensive details about his bitcoin purchases. He has also revoked its status as legal currency and committed to curtailing further purchases. For now, investigative journalists can only speculate as to the encumbrances and funding sources for El Salvador’s 6,114.18 state bitcoin.

Nayib Bukele’s tune has seemingly changed his stance on the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Bukele once laughed at its bankers causing a dip in bitcoin (BTC) prices, refused to consider repeated requests to revoke the crypto as legal tender, and angered IMF workers with various tweets.

He has also censored the IMF’s views within El Salvador and refused to meet its demands for debt refinancing.

However, yesterday, the president’s staff kowtowed to IMF demands, agreeing to confine his administration’s BTC-related economic activities and transactions, eliminate the acceptance of BTC tax payments, and unwind the government’s involvement with its once-state-backed BTC wallet and ATM network, Chivo.

Bukele made these compromises to get access to a paltry $1.4 billion loan extension to fund his administration’s reform agenda.

Juanita Goebertus, the director of the Americas Division of the advocacy group Human Rights Watch, told ABC News that detainees in CECOT, as well as other prisons in El Salvador, are denied communication with their relatives and lawyers, and only make court appearances in online hearings, often in groups of several hundred detainees at the same time.

"The Salvadoran government has described people held in CECOT as 'terrorists,' and has said that they 'will never leave,'" Goebertus said, adding that the Human Rights Watch is not aware of any detainees who have ever been released from CECOT.

According to human rights advocates and immigration attorneys, CECOT prisoners only leave their cell for 30 minutes a day and sleep on metal beds in overcrowded cells.

Frengel Reyes Mota was supposed to be dealing with his ongoing asylum case as he fought for his chance to stay in the United States. Suddenly, he instead found himself locked up in a mega prison thousands of miles away.

“He’s in the torture prison in El Salvador,” Mark Prada, Reyes Mota’s lawyer, told Immigration Judge Jorge Pereira during a hearing on Monday at the Krome Detention Center in western Miami-Dade County. The hearing had been scheduled before Reyes Mota was sent out of the country.

Reyes Mota is among the hundreds of Venezuelans that the Trump administration deported earlier this month through the use of extraordinary wartime powers based on a 1798 law. The administration sent them to the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, claiming they are members of the notorious Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua.

But the 24-year-old father does not have a criminal record in Venezuela. His U.S. immigration detention records are riddled with mistakes, raising questions about how reliable they are. He does not have tattoos and his family members deny he has any gang ties.