NEW YORK, USA. – The former head of the Honduran cartel Los Cachiros, Leonel Rivera, said in a drug-trafficking trial in New York on Thursday that he has bribed the current president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernandez, to its vice president Ricardo Alvarez and two former presidents, Manuel Zelaya and Porfirio Lobo, in exchange for protection and government contracts to launder drug money.
In shocking testimony, Rivera said Los Cachiros surrendered to it Hilda Hernandez, sister of the president, $ 250,000 in cash in 2012, when he was a congressman and presidential candidate, in exchange for “ protection that both the military and preventive police wouldn’t capture us in Honduras, that we wouldn’t go there. and my brother (Javier) are being extradited to the United States and that Juan Orlando Hernández would continue to give us contracts to launder drug money. “
READ ALSO: Ricardo Álvarez: ‘I categorically deny any receipt of money of illegal origin’
Southern District Prosecutors Believe Honduras President a “co-conspirator” of the alleged drug trafficker Geovanny Fuentes in the traffic of tons of cocaine to the United States, assuring that both were partners and “they planned to send as much cocaine to the United States as they could”.
Hernández categorically denies the charges and has not been charged by the US legal system.
“How to make false testimonials believe I was dealing with drug traffickers, if that’s proven The Cachiros They were looking for a deal with the US because criminals couldn’t make a deal with me. They will die in a foreign prison if the Magic Key does not work for them “from reduced sentences,” the president tweeted on Wednesday.
Cash Bribery
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 launder money. Tony Hernández was found guilty of drug trafficking in New York in 2019 and his sentence is scheduled for March 23.
It is not the first time that the president of Honduras has been involved in drug trafficking: at the trial of his brother Tony, the former Honduran mayor Alexander Ardon He said he attended a meeting in 2013 where the former head of the Sinaloa cartel Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán donated $ 1 million in cash for Juan Orlando Hernández’s election campaign.
ALSO READ: Mel Zelaya denies receiving bribes from ‘Los Cachiros’
The former capo, a cooperating witness in the Fuentes trial that began in New York on Monday, also reported paying half a million dollars to the vice president and former mayor of Tegucigalpa. Ricardo Alvarez in 2012, when he was running for president of Honduras, in exchange for ‘offering us protection so that my brother Javier and I would not be arrested in Honduras’.
Álvarez “pledged to overturn Honduran extradition bill to the United States” and new government contracts for the Los Cachiros front companies, said Rivera, a legendary drug boss who confesses 78 murders and worked for the US anti-drug agency DEA in Honduras. years, until it was handed over to US authorities in 2015.
The Cachiros have also bribed half a million dollars of drug trafficking to the US 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 that didn’t happen in the end, said the former drug lord, wearing a yellow prison suit and chained ankles.
Zelaya dismissed the charges on Twitter. “The irrefutable proof that I have never received a bribe is that I have never appointed a secretary, either of organized crime or under pressure from the US embassy,” he wrote on Thursday.
The leader of Los Cachiros also announced 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.
“Pepe” Lobo’s son, Fabio, was sentenced to 24 years in prison in New York City in 2017 for drug trafficking.
Rivera said he and his brother surrendered to US authorities when Washington began investigating them and when they felt his life in Honduras was in danger.
“I felt cornered because of the office DEA in New York and the Southern District of New York prosecutors called me and Javier Rivera through OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control, depending on the US Treasury). And they didn’t mention the corrupt political drug traffickers we bribed, ”he complained.
Nor were there other drug traffickers working with them, neither “the military police who had worked with us” nor “the Honduras Preventive Police”, which was also bribed by the Los Cachiros cartel.
Rivera is facing a life sentence plus 30 years in prison, but hopes to receive a reduction in his sentence in exchange for his testimony in this trial and other earlier ones, such as that of Tony Hernández and Fabio Lobo.
ALSO READ: Former Los Cachiros leader says he paid bribes to JOH, Manuel Zelaya and Ricardo Álvarez