NEW YORK, USA.- The fifth day of trial against the alleged Honduran drug trafficker Geovanny Fonts Ramirez was suspended this Friday for health issues of one of the jurors.
Due to the state of health of the jury member, the judge hearing the case determined to postpone the continuation of the trial to Monday, March 15, 2021.
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The fourth day of trial against Fonts Ramirez has sparked a political tsunami in Honduras, after that Devis Leonel Maradiaga, one of the witnesses for the Public Prosecutor’s Office said that he bribed two former presidents, the current president and the presidential nominee.
Rivera explained that the Cachiros gave Hilda Hernández, sister of President Juan Orlando Hernández, $ 250,000 in cash in 2012, when he was a congressman and presidential candidate, in exchange for “protection” so that “they would not capture us. in Honduras “neither the military nor the preventive police.
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The bribe also sought “that my brother (Javier) and I would not be extradited to the United States,” and that the government would give the cartel “contracts to launder money from drug trafficking,” Rivera said.
Rivera also said that in 2014, when Hernandez was already president, he handed over $ 50,000 in cash at a Tegucigalpa restaurant to his brother Juan Antonio “Tony” Hernandez because he “promised contracts for Inrimar,” a cover company for Els Cachiros. to launder money.
Tony Hernandez was found guilty of drug trafficking in New York in 2019 and his sentence is scheduled for March 23.
Cash bribes
This is not the first time the Honduran president has been involved in drug trafficking: during the trial of his brother Tony, former Honduran mayor Alexander Ardó explained that he attended a meeting in 2013 where the former head of the Sinaloa poster Joaquín “Chapo” Guzmán gave Tony one million dollars for the campaign for the presidency of Joan Orlando Hernández.
Rivera, a cooperating witness in the trial of Sources that began Monday in New York, also reported that he paid half a million dollars to Vice President Ricardo Alvarez in 2012, when he was a candidate for the presidency of Honduras, in exchange for “giving us protection.”
Alvarez “promised to repeal the extradition law” in the United States and new government contracts for companies facade of Los Cachiros, said Rivera, a legendary drug chief who confesses to 78 murders and worked for the US anti-drug agency DEA in Honduras two years, until it was handed over to US authorities in 2015.
SEE: Ex-leader of the Cachiros says he paid bribes to JOH, Manuel Zelaya and Ricardo Alvarez
The vice president denied “any link or receipt of money of illicit origin” on his Twitter account. “I have nothing to hide,” he stated.
The Cachiros also bribed former President Manuel Zelaya (2006-2009) with half a million dollars in drug trafficking in 2006 in exchange for “putting a cousin of mine as security minister,” Rivera told a jury. But in the end this did not happen, he clarified on his second day of testimony this bald man with a fine mustache, dressed in a yellow prisoner suit and with chained ankles.
The leader of Els Cachiros also revealed that the government of Porfirio “Pepe” Llop (2010-2014) “gave us several road contracts (…) so money was laundered from drug trafficking.”
During the trial of Tony Hernandez, U.S. prosecutors said Wolf and the current president received millions from drug trafficking in bribes and election funding.
“Pepe” Wolf’s son, Fabio, was sentenced to 24 years in prison for drug trafficking in 2017 in New York.
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