New York, United States
The former leader of the Honduran drug gang Els Cachiro, Devis Leonel Rivera, who is participating as a cooperating witness in a trial in New York, said on Monday that bribing presidents of his country for protection and contracts cost him dollars, ”although he did not provide an exact figure or present documentary evidence.
“We pay many millions of dollars to the presidents,” Rivera said in the open trial in New York against Geovanny Fonts Ramirez, who is on trial for drug trafficking and possession of weapons.
Rivera made this statement to Ramirez’s lawyer, Avraham Moskowitz, who asked him if over the years the Cachiros cartel had paid “a little over a million” dollars to various Honduran presidents for protection, business and not be extradited.
“Isn’t bribing a president cheap?” Moskowitz asked then; to which Rivera replied, “It’s not cheap, it’s expensive.”
Before reaching this point, Moskowitz’s defense had reviewed part of the story Rivera told the Prosecutor’s Office in the last session, held last Thursday.
Thus, the leader of the Cachiros insisted that he had given a bribe to Porfirio Lobo (2010-2014) of between $ 250.00 and $ 300,000 and that during the presidency of Wolf, his son Fabio Lobo, sentenced to 24 years of imprisoned by a New York court, he accompanied him during the transfer of shipments of cocaine to ensure protection.
He also stressed that he bribed former President Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009) with half a million dollars and that he gave the current president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, “approximately” $ 250,000 in 2012.
According to his account, this payment was made on the eve of the 2013 elections and that like Els Cachiros paid Hernández, they also bribed other presidential candidates, although he did not offer names.
The Honduran president reiterated on Monday 8, coinciding with the start of the trial in New York, that the testimonies of drug traffickers implicating him in the business of selling cocaine are false.
“The lies are obvious. The Cachiros had a $ 1 billion empire. Their false testimony is that with me the narcos were able to make deals. So why did they decide ten days after my election (in November 2013) to leave his empire to die in a foreign prison? “Hernandez wrote on Twitter.
During his turn, defense Geovanny Fonts Ramirez tried to look for inconsistencies in the drug trafficker’s testimony and suggested that his testimony is conditioned by the collaboration agreement reached with the United States Government by which they could recommend to the judge to downgrade his life sentence that is expected to await Rivera, who has pleaded guilty to drug trafficking and other crimes. EFE