New York, United States.
Devis Leonel Rivera, former head of the Honduran cartel Los Cachiros, said in the trial on Thursday that Geovanny Fuentes Ramírez, who has bribed the current president of Honduras, is being followed. Juan Orlando Hernandez, to its vice president Ricardo Alvarez and the ex-president Manuel Zelaya in exchange for protection
Rivera said Los Cachiros handed over to Hilda Hernández, President Juan Orlando Hernández’s sister, $ 250,000 in cash in 2012, when he was a congressman and candidate for president, in exchange for ‘protection that neither the military police nor the preventive police would catch us in Honduras’, that I and my brother would not be extradited. (Javier) to the United States and that Juan Orlando Hernández would continue to give us contracts to launder drug money, ”Rivera said in a trial in federal court in Manhattan.
Prosecutors in New York’s Southern District view the president of Honduras as a “co-conspirator” of alleged drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes in the traffic of tons of cocaine to the United States, but Hernández has denied all charges.
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Rivera also said that in 2014, when Hernández was already president, he gave $ 50,000 in cash at a restaurant in Tegucigalpa to his brother Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernández because he “promised contracts to launder Inrimar, a Los Cachiros front company. Tony Hernández was found guilty of drug trafficking in New York in 2019 and his sentence is scheduled for March 23.
Rivera, a cooperating witness in the Geovanny Fuentes trial that began in New York on Monday, also reported that he was paying half a million dollars to the vice president and former mayor from Tegucigalpa Ricardo Álvarez in 2012, when he was running for president of Honduras, in exchange for ‘giving us protection so that my brother Javier and I would not be arrested in Honduras’.
Álvarez “pledged to annul the Honduran extradition bill to the United States” and new government contracts for the Los Cachiros front companies, said Rivera, a drug boss who confessed to 78 murders and worked for the US anti-drug agency DEA in Honduras. years, until it was handed over to US authorities in 2015.
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De Cachiro said they also bribed half a million dollars in drug trafficking to former President Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009) in 2006, in exchange for “ placing a cousin of mine as Secretary of Security, ” Rivera told the jury, but “ in the end that didn’t happen, ” said the former, dressed in a prison suit, yellow and with chained ankles.
The Los Cachiros leader also revealed that the government of Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo (2010-2014) helped Los Cachiros launder money. “He gave us several road contracts. Pepe Lobo’s government paid us with checks from the Honduran government and drug money was laundered,” he said.
The US prosecution, as in the trial of the brother of the president of Honduras, Tony Hernández, held in New York at the end of 2019, defends that Honduras is a “narco-state”.
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As a result of what was assured by Devis Maradiaga, the former president of Honduras Manuel Zelaya Rosales He did not skimp on twisting such statements.
“There is a contradiction in the testimony because in 2006 I was not in a political campaign, I was already president, I recognize that I was under pressure from the US embassy and other sectors to name certain characters, but it never happened and there were no bribes, “he said. Zelaya.
“When I was president we led the Liberal Party, at that time there were delegates and leaders from Colón who recommended personalities to me, but it was never about bribes. I never dealt with them (Los Cachiros), I just know what has been said in the media, what he (Devis Maradiaga) says is not true, I need not deny anything that makes no sense, “he insisted.
Meanwhile the president Juan Orlando Hernandez he has described the testimonies of Los Cachiros and other drug traffickers as “obvious lies and completely contradictory to the facts”.
The Honduran leader has reiterated that the drug traffickers being tried in the United States for “their false testimony” are trying to lower their sentences while “retaliating”, believing that “their lies” can function as a “magic”. key. ”.
“The drug traffickers swear that the drug traffickers bought total impunity, but 10 days after my election, Los Cachiros decided to leave their empire and negotiate their surrender to the US,” the president said.
Ricardo Alvarez He denied having any affiliation with Devis Maradiaga or any other person accused of drug trafficking, “I have nothing to hide as I can verify the legality of my income and remain available to the authorities of the country.”