US prosecutors asserted that the president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, accepted bribes from a Honduran drug trafficker in exchange for protecting his cocaine laboratory and his drug trafficking activities and he also agreed to allow the armed forces to help the trafficker transport drugs.
Prosecutors for the Southern District of New York say in court documents filed in the electronic federal court system that Hernández explained to others how he was embezzling aid money offered by the United States through fraudulent nonprofit organizations. He also allegedly said that he stole money from the Honduran social security system, prosecutors say.
The president is not cited by his name in court documents but is designated as CC-4, that is co-conspirator number 4, as prosecutors have done numerous times in the past. Hernández has repeatedly denied any previous allegations.
The president was repeatedly named by name and position in the trial of Tony Hernández, his brother, where the president was accused of accepting a million dollars in drug proceeds from the trafficker Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán .
The president has not been formally accused of anything by the US authorities.
In the package of court documents of more than 55 pages, prosecutors say that Hernández is outside the reach of the US government to receive a subpoena and that Hernández would likely appeal his right not to speak if he were questioned under oath about these activities.
The documents, presented Friday night, refer to the case of Geovanny Daniel Fuentes Ramírez, a trafficker who was arrested on March 1, 2020 in Miami. When Fuentes Ramírez’s arrest was announced in March, prosecutors said the president met with him in 2013 and accepted a $ 25,000 bribe in exchange for protection. They also said, as they repeat now, that the president told Fuentes Ramírez that he was interested in having access to the latter’s cocaine laboratory because of its proximity to the commercial area of Puerto Cortés, on the northeast Honduras’s coast.
The president has repeatedly dismissed the accusations, claiming they are lies by drug traffickers seeking revenge for their harsh policies imposed to combat drug trafficking. An email on Saturday, sent to a collaborator of the president requesting a response to the allegations, wasn’t immediately returned.
