Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez Accused Of Taking $25,000 Drug Money By US Prosecutors

Honduras President Juan Orlando Hernandez is accused by U.S. prosecutors of taking drug money in 2013. The president allegedly took $25,000 in exchange for the protection of a drug trafficker, The Guardian reported.

While the statement issued by the U.S. attorney’s office for the southern district of New York did not specifically mention President Juan Orlando Hernández as a co-conspirator but only referred to him as a “high-ranking Honduran official” or as “CC-4,” other documents linked his name as the “CC-4.”

For instance, court documents identified the “CC-4” as the President of Honduras and brother of former congressman Juan Antonio Hernández Alvarado. A previous filing also revealed that the “CC-4” is the winner of the 2013 presidential elections.

President Hernandez did not yet make a comment on the recent allegations by the prosecutors. However, he has repeatedly denied any involvement with traffickers in the past.

Prosecutors say that alleged trafficker Geovanny Daniel Fuentes Ramírez met with Juan Orlando on several occasions to talk about a cocaine lab that the former was operating near Puerto Cortes. Hernandez reportedly “expressed interest in access to the lab because it was so close to the port.” However, court documents did not reveal why Hernandez was interested in the lab.

The documents also claim that Juan Orlando Hernández and Fuentes reached an agreement “to facilitate the use of Honduran armed forces personnel as security” for the latter’s drug-trafficking activities.

The documents also alleged that Hernandez told Fuentes that his brother, Hernández Alvarado, “was managing drug-trafficking activities in Honduras.” It was also revealed that Hernandez instructed: “that Fuentes should report directly to Hernández Alvarado for purposes of drug trafficking.”

“Fuentes Ramírez paved the way for unimpeded shipment of multi-ton loads of cocaine by bribing police and a high-ranking Honduran politician, and reporting directly to Tony Hernandez, another co-conspirator in the scheme and himself a former Honduran congressman,” US attorney Geoffrey Berman said in the statement.

Ramirez was arrested by prosecutors at the Miami International airport on Sunday. He is facing charges of conspiring to import cocaine in the U.S. as well as related weapons charges.