New York, United States
The former leader of the Honduran drug trafficking gang Los Cachiro, Devis Leonel Rivera, who is participating in a trial in New York as a cooperating witness, assured this Monday that bribing his country’s presidents to get protection and contracts has him “ many millions of dollars. cost. although it did not provide an exact figure or documented evidence.
“We are paying many millions of dollars to the presidents,” Rivera said in the trial opened in New York against Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez, for alleged drug trafficking and possession of weapons.
Rivera made this statement to Ramírez’s attorney, Avraham Moskowitz, who asked him if the Los Cachiros cartel had paid “a little over a million” dollars over the years to several Honduran presidents to get protection, do business. and not to be extradited.
“Bribing a president isn’t cheap, is it?” Moskowitz asked then; to which Rivera replied, “It’s not cheap, it’s expensive.”
Before reaching this point, Moskowitz’s defense had discussed part of the story Rivera had presented to the prosecution during last Thursday’s final session.
In this way, the leader of Los Cachiros insisted that he had given Porfirio Lobo (2010-2014) bribes of between $ 250.00 and $ 300,000 and that during Lobo’s presidency his son Fabio Lobo was sentenced to 24 years in prison for a court in New York accompanied him during the transfer of shipments of cocaine to ensure protection.
He also emphasized that he had bribed former President Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009) with half a million dollars and that in 2012 he gave current President of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, “approximately” $ 250,000.
According to his account, that payment was made on the eve of the 2013 election, and just as Los Cachiros paid Hernández, they also bribed other presidential candidates, although he did not offer names.
The Honduran president reiterated Monday the 8th, which coincided with the start of the trial in New York, that the testimonies of drug traffickers involving him in cocaine sales are false.
“The lies are clear. The Cachiros had a billion dollar empire. Their false testimony is that the narcos were able to make deals with me. So why did they decide ten days after my election (in November 2013) to destroy their empire? to die in a foreign prison? ” Hernandez wrote on Twitter.
In turn, Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez’s defense attempted to look for inconsistencies in the drug trafficking leader’s testimony and suggested that his testimony is contingent on the cooperation agreement reached with the United States government, which could allow them to go to court recommend to lower his sentence to life imprisonment that predictably awaits Rivera, who has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and other crimes. EFE