NEW YORK, USA. – The fifth day of the trial of the alleged Honduran drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes Ramirez He was suspended on Friday due to health problems of one of the judges.
Due to the juror’s health, the judge hearing the case has decided to postpone the continuation of the trial until Monday, March 15, 2021.
READ ALSO: ‘Hilda Hernández got upset because I didn’t want to receive money from her’: Óscar Nájera
The fourth day of the Fuentes Ramírez trial subsequently led to a political tsunami in Honduras Devis Leonel Maradiaga, One of the prosecution’s witnesses assured that he had bribed two former presidents, the current president and the designated president.
Rivera said Los Cachiros gave Hilda Hernández, President Juan Orlando Hernández’s sister, $ 250,000 in cash in 2012, when he was a congressman and running for president, in exchange for “ protection ” so that “ they wouldn’t catch us in Honduras. . . Neither the army nor the preventive police.
ALSO: The drug traffickers who splash Juan Orlando Hernández with their statements (PHOTOS)
The bribe was also intended to “not extradite me and my brother (Javier) to the United States,” and that the government gave the cartel “contracts to launder drug money,” Rivera said.
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 for Inrimar,” a Los Cachiros front company to whitewash. Wash. money.
Tony Hernández was found guilty of drug trafficking in New York in 2019 and his sentence is scheduled for March 23.
Cash Bribery
It is not the first time that the president of Honduras has been involved in drug trafficking: during the trial of his brother Tony, former Honduran mayor Alexander Ardón said he attended a meeting in 2013 where former head of the Sinaloa cartel Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán gave Tony a million dollars for the campaign for president Juan Orlando Hernández.
Rivera, a cooperating witness in the Fuentes trial that began in New York on Monday, also said he paid half a million dollars to Vice President Ricardo Álvarez in 2012, when he was running for president of Honduras, in exchange for “protection”.
Álvarez “promised to annul extradition bill” to the United States and new government contracts for the Los Cachiros front companies, said Rivera, a legendary drug boss who confessed to 78 murders and worked for two for the US anti-drug agency DEA in Honduras. year. until it was handed over to US authorities in 2015.
SEE: Former Los Cachiros leader says he paid bribes to JOH, Manuel Zelaya and Ricardo Álvarez
The vice president denied “any link or receipt of money of illegal origin” on his Twitter account. “I have nothing to hide,” he said.
The Cachiros also bribed former President Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009) with half a million dollars from drug trafficking in 2006 in exchange for “placing a cousin of mine as Secretary of Security,” Rivera told the jury. But in the end it didn’t, clarified this bald man with a fine mustache, wearing a yellow prison suit and chained ankles, on his second day of testimony.
The Los Cachiros leader also revealed that the government of Porfirio “Pepe” Lobo (2010-2014) “has given us several road contracts (…) this is how drug money was laundered.”
During Tony Hernández’s trial, the US prosecutor’s office said Lobo and the current president have received millions from drug trafficking in the form of bribes and election funding.
“Pepe” Lobo’s son, Fabio, was sentenced to 24 years in prison in New York City in 2017 for drug trafficking.
MAY BE INTERESTED IN: Trial of Geovanny Fuentes: The story of the leader of “Los Cachiros”